Yfc/ 


The  Secret  Battle 


NEW  BORZOI  NOVELS 
SPRING.  1920 

PETER  JAMESON 
By  Gilbert  Frankau 

THE  ROLLING  STONE 
By  C.  A.  Dawson-Scott 

THE   CROSS  PULL 
By  Hal  G.  Evarts 

DELIVERANCE 

By  E.  L.  Grant  Watson 

THE  TALLEYRAND  MAXIM 
By  J.  S.  Fletcher 

WHERE   ANGELS   FEAR  TO 
TREAD 

By  E.  M.  Forster 


The  Secret  Battle 


By 
A.  P.  Herbert 


New  York 

Alfred  •  A  •  Knopf 
1920 


COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY  L)   lT*1   / 

ALFRED  A.  KNOPF,  INC. 

Published  January,  1920  * 


PRINTED   IN   TflE   TJNJTEP   STATES   OF   AMERICA 


I  AM  going  to  write  down  some  of  the  his- 
tory of  Harry  Penrose,  because  I  do  not 
think  full  justice  has  been  done  to  him, 
and  because  there  must  be  many  other  young 
men  of  his  kind  who  flung  themselves  into  this 
war  at  the  beginning  of  it,  and  have  gone  out 
of  it  after  many  sufferings  with  the  unjust 
and  ignorant  condemnation  of  their  fellows. 
At  times,  it  may  be,  I  shall  seem  to  digress 
into  the  dreary  commonplaces  of  all  war- 
chronicles,  but  you  will  never  understand  the 
ruthless  progression  of  Penrose's  tragedy 
without  some  acquaintance  with  each  chapter 
of  his  life  in  the  army. 

He  joined  the  battalion  only  a  few  days 
before  we  left  Plymouth  for  Gallipoli,  a  shy, 
intelligent-looking  person,  with  smooth, 
freckled  skin  and  quick,  nervous  movements; 

[7] 


i 


THe;  Secret '-Battle 

and  although  he  was  at  once  posted  to  my 
company  we  had  not  become  at  all  intimate 
when  we  steamed  at  last  into  Mudros  Bay. 
But  he  had  interested  me  from  the  first,  and 
at  intervals  in  the  busy  routine  of  a  troop- 
ship passing  without  escort  through  subma- 
rine waters,  I  had  been  watching  him  and  de- 
lighting in  his  keenness  and  happy  disposition. 
It  was  not  my  first  voyage  through  the 
Mediterranean,  though  it  was  the  first  I  had 
made  in  a  transport,  and  I  liked  to  sec  my 
own  earlier  enthusiasm  vividly  reproduced 
in  him.  Cape  Spartel  and  the  first  glimpse 
of  Africa;  Tangicrs  and  Tarifa  and  all  that 
magical  hour's  steaming  through  the  narrow 
waters  with  the  pink  and  white  houses  hiding 
under  the  hills;  Gibraltar  Town  shimmering 
and  asleep  in  the  noonday  sun;  Malta  and 
the  bumboat  women,  carozzes  swaying 
through  the  narrow,  chattering  streets;  cool 
drinks  at  cafes  in  a  babel  of  strange  tongues : 
all  these  were  to  Penrose  part  of  the  authentic 
glamour  of  the  East;  and  he  said  so.  I  might 
have  told  him,  with  the  fatuous  pomp  of  wider 
experience,  that  they  were  in  truth  but  a  very 
[8] 


The  Secret  Battle 

distant  reflection  of  the  genuine  East;  but  1 
did  not.  For  it  was  refreshing  to  see  any  one 
so  frankly  confessing  to  the  sensations  of  ad- 
venture and  romance.  To  other  members  of 
the  officers'  mess  the  spectacle  of  Gibraltar 
from  the  sea  may  have  been  more  stimulating 
than  the  spectacle  of  Southend  (though  this 
is  doubtful)  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  few  of  them 
would  have  admitted  the  grave  impeachment. 
At  Malta  some  of  us  spent  an  evening 
ashore,  and  sat  for  a  little  in  a  tawdry,  riotous 
little  cafe,  where  two  poor  singing  women 
strove  vainly  to  make  themselves  heard  above 
the  pandemonium  of  clinked  glasses  and 
bawled  orders;  there  we  met  many  officers 
newly  returned  from  the  landing  at  Cape 
Helles,  some  of  them  with  slight  bodily 
wounds,  but  all  of  them  with  grievous  injury 
staring  out  of  their  eyes.  Those  of  them  who 
would  speak  at  all  were  voluble  with  anec- 
dotes of  horror  and  blood.  Most  of  our  own 
party  had  not  yet  lost  the  light-hearted  mood 
in  which  men  went  to  the  war  in  those  days; 
the  "picnic"  illusion  of  war  was  not  yet  dis- 
pelled; also,  individually,  no  doubt,  we  had 

[9] 


The  Secret  Battle 

that  curious  confidence  of  the  unblooded  sol- 
dier that  none  of  these  strange,  terrible  things 
could  ever  actually  happen  to  us;  we  should 
for  ever  hang  upon  the  pleasant  fringes  of 
war,  sailing  in  strange  seas,  and  drinking  in 
strange  towns,  but  never  definitely  entangled 
in  the  more  crude  and  distasteful  circum- 
stances of  battle.  And  if  there  were  any  of 
us  with  a  secret  consciousness  that  we  de- 
ceived ourselves,  tonight  was  no  time  to  tear 
away  the  veil.  Let  there  be  lights  and  laugh- 
ter and  wine;  tomorrow,  if  need  be,  let  us  be 
told  how  the  wounded  had  drowned  in  the 
wired  shallows,  and  reckon  the  toll  of  that 
unforgettable  exploit  and  the  terrors  that  were 
still  at  work.  And  so  we  would  not  be  dra- 
gooned into  seriousness  by  these  messengers 
from  the  Peninsula;  but  rather,  with  no  injury 
to  their  feelings,  laughed  at  their  croakings 
and  continued  to  drink. 

But  Harry  Penrose  was  different  He  was 
all  eagerness  to  hear  every  detail,  hideous  and 
heroic. 

There  was  one  officer  present,  from  the  29th 
Division,  a  man  about  thirty,  with  a  tanned, 

[10] 


The  Secret  Battle 

melancholy  face  and  great  solemn  eyes,  which, 
for  all  the  horrors  he  related,  seemed  to  have 
something  yet  more  horrible  hidden  in  their 
depths.  Him  Harry  plied  with  questions,  his 
reveller's  mood  flung  impatiently  aside;  and 
the  man  seemed  ready  to  tell  him  things, 
though  from  his  occasional  reservations  and 
sorrowful  smile  I  knew  that  he  was  pitying 
Harry  for  his  youth,  his  eagerness  and  his 
ignorance. 

Around  us  were  the  curses  of  overworked 
waiters,  and  the  babble  of  loud  conversations, 
and  the  smell  of  spilt  beer;  there  were  two 
officers  uproariously  drunk,  and  in  the  dis- 
tance pathetic  snatches  of  songs  were  heard 
from  the  struggling  singer  on  the  dais.  We 
were  in  one  of  the  first  outposts  of  the  Empire, 
and  halfway  to  one  of  her  greatest  adventures. 
And  this  excited  youth  at  my  side  was  the  only 
one  of  all  that  throng  who  was  ready  to  hear 
the  truth  of  it,  and  to  speak  of  death.  I  lay 
emphasis  on  this  incident,  because  it  well  il- 
lustrates his  attitude  towards  the  war  at  that 
time  (which  too  many  have  now  forgotten), 
and  because  I  then  first  found  the  image  which 


The  Secret  Battle 

alone  reflects  the  many  curiosities  of  his  per- 
sonality. 

He  was  like  an  imaginative,  inquisitive 
child;  a  child  that  cherishes  a  secret  gallery 
of  pictures  in  its  mind,  and  must  continually 
be  feeding  this  storehouse  with  new  pictures  of 
the  unknown;  that  is  not  content  with  a  vague 
outline  of  something  that  is  to  come,  a  dentist, 
or  a  visit,  or  a  doll,  but  will  not  rest  till  the  ex- 
perience is  safely  put  away  in  its  place,  a  clear, 
uncompromising  picture,  to  be  taken  down 
and  played  with  at  will. 

Moreover,  he  had  the  fearlessness  of  a  child 
— but  I  shall  come  to  that  later. 

And  so  we  came  to  Mudros,  threading  a 
placid  way  between  the  deceitful  Aegean  Is- 
lands. Harry  loved  them  because  they  wore 
so  green  and  inviting  an  aspect,  and  again  I 
did  not  undeceive  him  and  tell  him  how 
parched  and  austere,  how  barren  of  comfort- 
able grass  and  shade  he  would  find  them  on 
closer  acquaintance.  We  steamed  into  Mu- 
dros Bay  at  the  end  of  an  unbelievable  sunset; 
in  the  great  harbour  were  gathered  regiments 
of  ships — battleship,  cruiser,  tramp,  transport, 

[12] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  trawler,  and  as  the  sun  sank  into  the  west- 
ern hills,  the  masts  and  the  rigging  of  all  of 
them  were  radiant  with  its  last  rays,  while  all 
their  decks  and  hulls  lay  already  in  the  soft 
blue  dusk.  There  is  something  extraordinar- 
ily soothing  in  the  almost  imperceptible  mo- 
tion of  a  big  steamer  gliding  at  slow  speed  to 
her  anchorage;  as  I  leaned  over  the  rail  of 
the  boat-deck  and  heard  the  tiny  bugle-calls 
float  across  from  the  French  or  English  war- 
ships, and  watched  the  miniature  crews  at 
work  upon  their  decks,  I  became  aware  that 
Pcnrosc  was  similarly  engaged  close  at  hand, 
and  it  seemed  to  me  an  opportunity  to  learn 
something  of  the  history  of  this  strange  young 
man. 

Beginning  with  his  delight  in  the  voyage 
and  all  the  marvellous  romance  of  our  sur- 
roundings, I  led  him  on  to  speak  of  himself. 
Both  his  parents  had  died  when  he  was  a  boy 
at  school.  They  had  left  him  enough  to  go  to 
Oxford  upon  (without  the  help  of  the  Ex- 
hibition he  had  won),  and  he  had  but  just 
completed  his  second  year  there  when  the  war 
broke  out.  For  some  mysterious  reason  he 


The  Secret  Battle 

had  immediately  enlisted  instead  of  applying 
for  a  commission,  like  his  friends.  I  gathered 
— though  not  from  anything  he  directly  said 
— that  he  had  had  a  hard  time  in  the  ranks. 
The  majority  of  his  companions  in  training 
had  come  down  from  the- north  with  the  first 
draft  of  Tynesiders;  and  though,  God  knows, 
the  Tynesider  as  a  fighting  man  has  been  un- 
surpassed in  this  war,  they  were  a  wild,  rough 
crowd  before  they  became  soldiers,  and  I  can 
understand  that  for  a  high-strung,  sensitive 
boy  of  his  type  the  intimate  daily  round  of 
eating,  talking,  and  sleeping  with  them,  must 
have  made  large  demands  on  his  patriotism 
and  grit.  But  he  said  it  did  him  good;  and 
it  was  only  the  pestering  of  his  guardian  and 
relations  that  after  six  months  forced  him  to 
take  a  commission.  He  had  a  curious  lack  of 
confidence  in  his  fitness  to  be  an  officer — a  feel- 
ing which  is  deplorably  absent  in  hundreds  not 
half  as  fit  as  he  was;  but  from  what  I  had 
seen  of  his  handling  of  his  platoon  on  the  voy- 
age (and  the  men  are  difficult  after  a  week 
or  two  at  sea)  I  was  able  to  assure  him  that  he 
need  have  no  qualms.  He  was,  I  discovered, 


The  Secret  Battle 

pathetically  full  of  military  ambitions;  he 
dreamed  already,  he  confessed,  of  decorations 
and  promotions  and  glorious  charges.  In 
short,  he  was  like  many  another  undergraduate 
officer  of  those  days  in  his  eagerness  and  readi- 
ness for  sacrifice,  but  far  removed  from  the 
common  type  in  his  romantic,  imaginative  out- 
look towards  the  war.  "Romantic"  is  the  only 
word,  I  think,  and  it  is  melancholy  for  me  to 
remember  that  even  then  I  said  to  myself,  "I 
wonder  how  long  the  romance  will  last,  my 


son." 


But  I  could  not  guess  just  how  terrible  was 
to  be  its  decay. 

II 

We  were  not  to  be  long  at  Mudros.  For 
three  days  we  lay  in  the  sweltering  heat  of  the 
great  hill-circled  bay,  watching  the  warships 
come  and  go,  and  buying  fruit  from  the  little 
Greek  sailing  boats  which  fluttered  round  the 
harbour.  These  were  days  of  hot  anxiety 
about  one's  kit;  hourly  each  officer  reorgan- 
ized and  re-disposed  his  exiguous  belongings, 
and  re-weighed  his  valise,  and  jettisoned  yet 


The  Secret  Battle 

more  precious  articles  of  comfort,  lest  the 
weight  regulations  be  violated  and  for  the  sake 
of  an  extra  shirt  the  whole  of  one's  equipment 
be  cast  into  the  sea  by  the  mysterious  figure 
we  believed  to  watch  over  these  things. 
Afterwards  we  found  that  all  our  care  was 
in  vain,  and  in  the  comfortless  camps  of  the 
Peninsula  bitterly  bewailed  the  little  luxuries 
we  had  needlessly  left  behind,  now  so  unat- 
tainable. Down  in  the  odorous  troop-decks 
the  men  wrote  long  letters  describing  the  bat- 
tles in  which  they  were  already  engaged,  and 
the  sound  of  quite  mythical  guns. 

But  on  the  third  day  came  our  sailing  or- 
ders. In  the  evening  a  little  trawler,  pro- 
moted to  the  dignity  of  a  fleet-sweeper,  came 
alongside,  and  all  the  regiment  of  gross,  over- 
loaded figures  festooned  with  armament  and 
bags  of  food,  and  strange,  knobbly  parcels, 
tumbled  heavily  over  the  side.  Many  men 
have  written  of  the  sailing  of  the  first  argosy 
of  troopships  from  that  bay;  and  by  this  time 
the  spectacle  of  departing  troops  was  an  old 
one  to  the  vessels  there.  But  this  did  not  di- 
minish the  quality  of  their  farewells.  All  the 
[16] 


The  Secret  Battle 

King's  ships  "manned  ship"  as  we  passed,  and 
sent  us  a  great  wave  of  cheering  that  filled  the 
heart  with  sadness  and  resolution. 

In  one  of  the  French  ships  was  a  party  of 
her  crew  high  up  somewhere  above  the  deck, 
and  they  sang  for  us  with  astonishing  accuracy 
and  feeling  the  "Chant  du  Depart";  so  mov- 
ing was  this  that  even  the  stolid  Northerners 
in  our  sweeper  were  stirred  to  make  some  more 
articulate  acknowledgment  than  the  official 
British  cheer;  and  one  old  pitman,  searching 
among  his  memories  of  some  Lancashire  mu- 
sic-hall, dug  out  a  rough  version  of  the  "Mar- 
seillaise." By  degrees  all  our  men  took  up 
the  tune  and  sang  it  mightily,  with  no  sus- 
picion of  words ;  and  the  officers,  not  less  tim- 
idly, joined  in,  and  were  proud  of  the  men  for 
what  they  had  done.  For  many  were  moved 
in  that  moment  who  were  never  moved  be- 
fore. But  while  we  were  yet  warm  with 
cheering  and  the  sense  of  knighthood,  we 
cleared  the  boom  and  shivered  a  little  in  the 
breeze  of  the  open  sea. 

The  sun  went  down,  and  soon  it  was  very 
cold  in  the  sweeper:  and  in  each  man's  heart 

[17] 


The  Secret  Battle 

I  think  there  was  a  certain  chill.  There  were 
no  more  songs,  but  the  men  whispered  in 
small  groups,  or  stood  silent,  shifting  uneasily 
their  wearisome  packs.  For  now  we  were  in- 
deed cut  off  from  civilization  and  committed 
to  the  unknown.  The  transport  we  had  left 
seemed  a  very  haven  of  comfort  and  security; 
one  thought  longingly  of  white  tables  in  the 
saloon,  and  the  unfriendly  linen  bags  of  bully- 
beef  and  biscuits  we  carried  were  concrete  evi- 
dence of  a  new  life.  The  war  seemed  no 
longer  remote,  and  each  of  us  realized  in- 
dignantly that  we  were  personally  involved 
in  it.  So  for  a  little  all  these  soldiers  had  a 
period  of  serious  thought  unusual  in  the  sol- 
dier's life.  But  as  we  neared  the  Peninsula 
the  excitement  and  novelty  and  the  prospect 
of  exercising  cramped  limbs  brought  back 
valour  and  cheerfulness. 

At  Malta  we  had  heard  many  tales  of  the 
still  terrifying  ordeal  of  landing  under  fire. 
But  such  terrors  were  not  for  us.  There  was 
a  bright  moon,  and  as  we  saw  the  pale  cliffs 
of  Cape  Helles,  all,  I  think,  expected  each 
moment  a  torrent  of  shells  from  some  obscure 
[18] 


The  Secret  Battle 

quarter.  But  instead  an  unearthly  stillness 
brooded  over  the  two  bays,  and  only  a  Morse 
lamp  blinking  at  the  sweeper  suggested  that 
any  living  thing  was  there.  And  there  came 
over  the  water  a  strange  musty  smell;  some 
said  it  was  the  smell  of  the  dead,  and  some 
the  smell  of  an  incinerator;  myself  I  do  not 
know,  but  it  was  the  smell  of  the  Peninsula 
for  ever,  which  no  man  can  forget.  We  dis- 
embarked at  a  pier  of  rafts  by  the  River  Clyde, 
and  stumbled  eagerly  ashore.  And  now  we 
were  in  the  very  heart  of  heroic  things.  No- 
where, I  think,  was  the  new  soldier  plunged 
so  suddenly  into  the  genuine  scenes  of  war  as 
he  was  at  Gallipoli;  in  France  there  was  a 
long  transition  of  training-camps  and  railway 
trains  and  billets,  and  he  moved  by  easy  grada- 
tions to  the  firing  line.  But  here,  a  few  hours 
after  a  night  in  linen  sheets,  we  stood  suddenly 
on  the  very  sand  where,  but  three  weeks  be- 
fore, those  hideous  machine-guns  in  the  cliffs 
had  mown  down  that  astonishing  party  of 
April  25.  And  in  that  silver  stillness  it  was 
difficult  to  believe. 

We  shambled  off  up  the  steady  slope  be- 

[19] 


The  Secret  Battle 

twecn  two  cliffs,  marvelling  that  any  men 
could  have  prevailed  against  so  perfect  a 
"field  of  fire/'  By  now  we  were  very  tired, 
and  it  was  heavy  work  labouring  through  the 
soft  sand.  Queer,  Moorish-looking  figures  in 
white  robes  peered  at  us  from  dark  corners, 
and  here  and  there  a  man  poked  a  tousled  head 
from  a  hole  in  the  ground,  and  blinked  upon 
our  progress.  Some  one  remarked  that  it 
reminded  him  of  nothing  so  much  as  the 
native  camp  at  EaiTs  Court  on  a  fine  August 
evening,  and  that  indeed  was  the  effect. 

After  a  little  the  stillness  was  broken  by 
a  sound  which  we  could  not  conceal  from 
ourselves  was  "the  distant  rattle  of  musketry" ; 
somewhere  a  gun  fired  startlingly;  and  now 
as  we  went  each  man  felt  vaguely  that  at  any 
minute  we  might  be  plunged  into  the  thick  of 
a  battle,  laden  as  we  were,  and  I  think  each 
man  braced  himself  for  a  desperate  struggle. 
Such  is  the  effect  of  marching  in  the  dark 
to  an  unknown  destination.  Soon  we  were 
halted  in  a  piece  of  apparently  waste  land 
circled  by  trees,  and  ordered  to  dig  ourselves 
a  habitation  at  once,  for  "in  the  morning"  it 

[20] 


The  Secret  Battle 

was  whispered  "the  Turks  search  all  this 
ground."  Everything  was  said  in  a  kind  of 
hoarse,  mysterious  whisper,  presumably  to 
conceal  our  observations  from  the  ears  of 
the  Turks  five  miles  away.  But  then  we  did 
not  know  they  were  five  miles  away;  we  had 
no  idea  where  they  were  or  where  we  were  our- 
selves. Men  glanced  furtively  at  the  North 
Star  for  guidance,  and  were  pained  to  find 
that,  contrary  to  their  military  teaching,  it 
told  them  nothing.  Even  the  digging  was 
carried  on  a  little  stealthily  till  it  was  dis- 
covered that  the  Turks  were  not  behind  those 
trees.  The  digging  was  a  comfort  to  the  men, 
who,  being  pitmen,  were  now  in  their  element; 
and  the  officers  found  solace  in  whispering  to 
each  other  that  magical  communication  about 
the  prospective  "searching";  it  was  the  first 
technical  word  they  had  used  "in  the  field," 
and  they  were  secretly  proud  to  know  what  it 
meant 

In  a  little  the  dawn  began,  and  the  grey 
trees  took  shape;  and  the  sun  came  up  out  of 
Asia,  and  we  saw  at  last  the  little  sugar-loaf 
peak  of  Achi  Baba,  absurdly  pink  and  diminu- 

[21] 


The  Secret  Battle 

tive  in  the  distance.  A  man's  first  frontal  im- 
pression of  that  great  rampart,  with  the  out- 
lying slopes  masking  the  summit,  was  that  it 
was  disappointingly  small;  but  when  he  had 
lived  under  and  upon  it  for  a  while,  day  by 
day,  it  seemed  to  grow  in  menace  and  in  bulk, 
and  ultimately  became  a  hideous,  overpower- 
ing monster,  pervading  all  his  life;  so  that  it 
worked  upon  men's  nerves,  and  almost  every- 
where in  the  Peninsula  they  were  painfully 
conscious  that  every  movement  they  made 
could  be  watched  from  somewhere  on  that 
massive  hill. 

But  now  the  kitchens  had  come,  and  there 
was  breakfast  and  viscous,  milkless  tea.  We 
discovered  that  all  around  our  seeming  soli- 
tude the  earth  had  been  peopled  with  sleepers, 
who  now  emerged  from  their  holes;  there  was 
a  stir  of  washing  and  cooking  and  singing,  and 
the  smoke  went  up  from  the  wood  fires  in  the 
clear,  cool  air.  D  Company  officers  made 
their  camp  under  an  olive-tree,  with  a  view 
over  the  blue  water  to  Samothrace  and  Im- 
bros,  and  now  in  the  early  cool,  before  the  sun 
had  gathered  his  noonday  malignity,  it  was 

[22] 


The  Secret  Battle 

very  pleasant.  At  seven  o'clock  the  "search- 
ing" began.  A  mile  away,  on  the  northern 
cliffs,  the  first  shell  burst,  stampeding  a  num- 
ber of  horses.  The  long-drawn  warning 
scream  and  the  final  crash  gave  all  the  ex- 
pectant battalion  a  faintly  pleasurable  thrill, 
and  as  each  shell  came  a  little  nearer  the  sen- 
sation remained.  No  one  was  afraid;  with- 
out the  knowledge  of  experience  no  one  could 
be  seriously  afraid  on  this  cool,  sunny  morning 
in  the  grove  of  olive-trees.  Those  chill  hours 
in  the  sweeper  had  been  much  more  alarming. 
The  common  sensation  was:  "At  last  I  am 
really  under  fire;  today  I  shall  write  home  and 
tell  them  about  it."  And  then,  when  it  seemed 
that  the  line  on  which  the  shells  were  falling 
must,  if  continued,  pass  through  the  middle 
of  our  camp,  the  firing  mysteriously  ceased. 

Harry,  I  know,  was  disappointed;  person- 
ally, I  was  pleased. 

I  learned  more  about  Harry  that  afternoon. 
He  had  been  much  exhausted  by  the  long 
night,  but  was  now  refreshed  and  filled  with 
an  almost  childish  enthusiasm  by  the  pictorial 

[23] 


The  Secret  Battle 

attractions  of  the  place.  For  this  enthusiastic 
soul  one  thing  only  was  lacking  in  the  site  of 
the  camp :  the  rise  of  the  hill  which  here  runs 
down  the  centre  of  the  Peninsula,  hid  from  us 
the  Dardanelles.  These,  he  said,  must  im- 
mediately be  viewed.  It  was  a  bright  after- 
noon of  blue  skies  and  gentle  air, — not  yet  had 
the  dry  north-east  wind  come  to  plague  us 
with  dust-clouds, — and  all  the  vivid  colours 
of  the  scene  were  unspoiled.  We  walked  over 
the  hill  through  the  parched  scrub,  where 
lizards  darted  from  under  our  feet  and  tor- 
toises lay  comatose  in  the  scanty  shade,  and 
came  to  a  kind  of  inland  cliff,  where  the 
Turks  had  had  many  riflemen  at  the  landing, 
for  all  the  ground  was  littered  with  empty 
cartridges.  And  there  was  unfolded  surely 
the  most  gorgeous  panorama  this  war  has  pro- 
vided for  prosaic  Englishmen  to  see.  Below 
was  a  cool,  inviting  grove  of  imperial  cy- 
presses; all  along  the  narrow  strip  between 
us  and  the  shore  lay  the  rest-lines  of  the 
French,  where  moved  lazy  figures  in  blue  and 
red,  and  black  Senegalese  in  many  colours. 
To  the  left  was  the  wide  sweep  of  Morto  Bay, 

[24] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  beyond  the  first  section  of  Achi  Baba  ris- 
ing to  De  Tott's  Battery  in  terraces  of  olives 
and  vines.  But  what  caught  the  immediate 
eye,  what  we  had  come  to  see  and  had  sailed 
hither  to  fight  for,  was  that  strip  of  unbeliev- 
ably blue  water  before  us,  deep,  generous  blue, 
like  a  Chinese  bowl.  On  the  farther  shore, 
towards  the  entrance  to  the  Straits,  we  could 
see  a  wide  green  plain,  and  beyond  and  to  the 
left,  peak  after  peak  of  the  mountains  of  Asia; 
and  far  away  in  the  middle  distance  there  was 
a  glint  of  snow  from  some  regal  summit  of  the 
Anatolian  Mountains. 

That  wide  green  plain  was  the  Plain  of 
Troy.  The  scarcity  of  classical  scholars  in 
Expeditionary  Forces,  and  the  wearisome  ob- 
servations of  pressmen  on  the  subject  of  Troy, 
have  combined  to  belittle  the  significance  of 
the  classical  surroundings  of  the  Gallipoli 
campaign.  I  myself  am  a  stolid,  ill-read  per- 
son, but  I  confess  that  the  spectacle  of  those 
historic  flats  was  not  one,  in  diplomatic  phrase, 
which  I  could  view  with  indifference.  On 
Harry,  ridiculously  excited  already,  the  effect 
was  almost  alarming.  He  became  quite  lyri- 

[25] 


The  Secret  Battle 

cal  over  two  little  sweepers  apparently  an- 
chored near  the  mouth  of  the  Straits.  "That," 
he  said,  "must  have  been  where  the  Greek  fleet 
lay.  God!  it's  wonderful."  Up  on  the  slope 
towards  De  Tott's  Battery  the  guns  were  busy, 
and  now  and  then  Asiatic  Annie  sent  over  a 
large  shell  from  the  region  of  Achilles'  tomb, 
which  burst  ponderously  in  the  sea  off  Cape 
Helles.  And  there  we  sat  on  the  rough  edge 
of  the  cliff  and  talked  of  Achilles  and  Hector 
and  Diomed  and  Patroclus  and  the  far-sound- 
ing bolts  of  Jove.  I  do  not  defend  or  exalt 
this  action;  but  this  is  a  truthful  record  of  a 
man's  personality,  and  I  simply  state  what  oc- 
curred. And  I  confess  that  with  the  best  wish 
in  the  world  I  was  myself  becoming  a  little 
bored  with  Troy,  when  in  the  middle  of  a 
sentence  he  suddenly  became  silent  and  gazed 
across  the  Straits  with  a  fixed,  pinched  look  in 
his  face,  like  a  man  who  is  reminded  of  some 
far-off  calamity  he  had  forgotten.  For  per- 
haps a  minute  he  maintained  this  rigid  aspect, 
and  then  as  suddenly  relaxed,  murmuring  in  a 
tone  of  relentless  determination,  "I  will."  It 
was  not  in  me  not  to  inquire  into  the  nature 


The  Secret  Battle 

of  this  passionate  intention,  and  somehow  I 
induced  him  to  explain. 

It  seemed  that  in  spite  of  his  genuine  aca- 
demic successes  and  a  moderate  popularity  at 
school  and  at  Oxford,  he  had  suffered  from 
early  boyhood  from  a  curious  distrust  of  his 
own  capacity  in  the  face  of  anything  he  had 
to  do.  In  a  measure,  no  doubt,  this  had  even 
contributed  to  his  successes.  For  his  nervous- 
ness took  the  form  of  an  intimate,  silent  brood- 
ing over  any  ordeal  that  lay  before  him, 
whether  it  was  a  visit  to  his  uncle,  or 
"Schools,"  or  a  dance:  he  would  lie  awake  for 
hours  imagining  all  conceivable  forms  of  er- 
ror and  failure  and  humiliation  that  might 
befall  him  in  his  endeavour.  And  though  he 
was  to  this  extent  forewarned  and  forearmed, 
it  must  have  been  a  painful  process.  And  it 
explained  to  me  the  puzzling  intervals  of 
seeming  melancholy  which  I  had  seen  vary- 
ing his  usually  cheerful  demeanour. 

"You  remember  last  night,"  he  said,  "I  had 
been  detailed  to  look  after  the  baggage  when 
we  disembarked,  and  take  charge  of  the  un- 
loading-party?  As  far  as  I  know  I  did  the 

[27] 


The  Secret  Battle 

job  all  right,  except  for  losing  old  Tompkins' 
valise — but  you  can't  think  how  much  worry 
and  anxiety  it  gave  me  beforehand.  All  the 
time  on  the  sweeper  I  was  imagining  the  hun- 
dreds of  possible  disasters:  the  working-party 
not  turning  up,  and  me  left  alone  on  the  boat 
with  the  baggage — the  Colonel's  things  being 
dropped  overboard — a  row  with  the  M.  L.  O. 
— getting  the  baggage  ashore,  and  then  losing 
the  battalion,  or  the  working-party,  or  the 
baggage.  It  all  worked  out  quite  simply,  but 
I  tell  you,  Benson,  it  gave  me  hell.  And  it's 
always  the  same.  That's  really  why  I  didn't 
take  a  commission — because  I  couldn't  im- 
agine myself  drilling  men  once  without  be- 
coming a  permanent  laughing-stock.  I  know 
now  that  I  was  a  fool  about  that — I  usually  do 
find  that  out — but  I  can't  escape  the  feeling 
next  time. 

"And  now,  it's  not  only  little  things  like  that, 
but  that's  what  I  feel  about  the  whole  war. 
I've  a  terror  of  being  a  failure  in  it,  a  failure 
out  here — you  know,  a  sort  of  regimental  dud. 
I've  heard  of  lots  of  them;  the  kind  of  man 
that  nobody  gives  an  important  job  because 

[28] 


The  Secret  Battle 

he's  sure  to  muck  it  up  (though  I  do  believe 
Eccleston's  more  likely  to  be  that  than  me). 
But  that's  what  I  was  thinking  just  now. 
Somehow,  looking  at  this  view — Troy  and  all 
that — and  thinking  how  those  Greeks  sweated 
blood  for  ten  years  on  afternoons  like  this,  do- 
ing their  duty  for  the  damned  old  kings,  and 
how  we've  come  out  here  to  fight  in  the  same 
place  thousands  of  years  afterwards,  and  we 
still  know  about  them  and  remember  their 
names — well,  it  gave  me  a  kind  of  inspiration; 
I  don't  know  why.  I've  got  a  bit  of  confidence 
— God  knows  how  long  it  will  last — but  I 
swear  I  won't  be  a  failure,  I  won't  be  the  bat- 
talion dud — and  I'll  have  a  damned  good  try 
to  get  a  medal  of  some  sort  and  be  like — like 
Achilles  or  somebody." 

Sheer  breathlessness  put  a  sudden  end  to 
this  outburst,  and  since  it  was  followed  by  a 
certain  shyness  at  his  own  revelations  I  did  not 
probe  deeper.  But  I  thought  to  myself  that 
this  young  man's  spirit  of  romance  would  die 
hard;  I  did  not  know  whether  it  would  ever 
die;  for  certainly  I  had  never  seen  that  spirit 
working  so  powerfully  in  any  man  as  a  posi- 

[29] 


The  Secret  Battle 

tive  incentive  to  achievement.  And  I  tell  you 
all  this,  because  I  want  you  to  understand  how 
it  was  with  him  in  the  beginning. 

But  now  the  bay  was  in  shadow  below  us ; 
on  the  hill  the  solemn  stillness  that  comes  over 
all  trenches  in  the  hour  before  dusk  had  al- 
ready descended,  and  away  towards  the  cape 
the  Indians  were  coming  out  to  kneel  in  prayer 
beside  the  alien  sea. 

The  Romance  of  War  was  in  full  song. 
And  scrambling  down  the  cliff,  we  bathed  al- 
most reverently  in  the  Hellespont 


[30] 


II 


THOSE  first  three  days  were  for  many 
of  us,  who  did  not  know  the  mild  au- 
tumn months,  the  most  pleasant  we 
spent  on  the  Peninsula.  The  last  weeks  of 
May  had  something  of  the  quality  of  an  old 
English  summer,  and  the  seven  plagues  of  the 
Peninsula  had  not  yet  attained  the  intolerable 
violence  of  June  and  July.  True,  the  inhab- 
ited portion  of  the  narrow  land  we  won  had 
already  become  in  great  part  a  wilderness; 
the  myrtle,  and  rock-rose,  and  tangled  cistus, 
and  all  that  wealth  of  spring  flowers  in  which 
the  landing  parties  had  fallen  and  died  in 
April,  had  long  been  trodden  to  death,  and 
there  were  wide  stretches  of  yellow  desert 
where  not  even  the  parched  scrub  survived. 
But  in  the  two  and  a  half  miles  of  bare  coun- 
try which  lay  between  the  capes  and  the  foot- 
hills of  Achi  Baba  was  one  considerable  oasis 
of  olives  and  stunted  oaks,  and  therein,  on 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  slopes  of  the  bridge,  was  our  camp  for- 
tunately set.  The  word  "camp"  contains  an 
unmerited  compliment  to  the  place.  The 
manner  of  its  birth  was  characteristic  of  mili- 
tary arrangements  in  those  days.  When  we 
were  told,  on  that  first  mysterious  midnight,  to 
dig  ourselves  a  shelter  against  the  morning's 
"searching,"  we  were  far  from  imagining  that 
what  we  dug  would  be  our  Peninsular  "home" 
and  haven  of  rest  from  the  firing-line  for  many 
months  to  come.  And  so  we  made  what  we 
conceived  to  be  the  quickest  and  simplest  form 
of  shelter  against  a  quite  temporary  emergency 
— long,  straight,  untraversed  ditches,  running 
parallel  to  and  with  but  a  few  yards  between 
each  other.  No  worse  form  of  permanent 
dwelling-place  could  conceivably  have  been 
constructed,  for  the  men  were  cramped  in 
these  places  with  a  minimum  of  comfort  and 
a  maximum  of  danger.  No  man  could  climb 
out  of  his  narrow  drain  without  casting  a 
shower  of  dust  from  the  crumbling  parapet  on 
to  his  sleeping  neighbour  in  the  next  ditch; 
and  three  large  German  shells  could  have  de- 
stroyed half  the  regiment.  Yet  there  were 

[32] 


The  Secret  Battle 

many  such  camps,  most  of  them  lacking  the 
grateful  concealment  of  our  trees.  Such  tar- 
gets even  the  Turkish  artillery  must  sometimes 
hit.  There  were  no  dug-outs  in  the  accepted 
sense  of  the  Western  Front,  no  deep,  elaborate, 
stair-cased  chambers,  hollowed  out  by  miners 
with  miners'  material.  Our  dug-outs  were 
dug-outs  in  truth,  shallow  excavations  scooped 
in  the  surface  of  the  earth.  The  only  roof 
for  a  man  against  sun  and  shells  was  a  water- 
proof sheet  stretched  precariously  over  his 
hole.  It  is  sufficient  testimony  to  the  indiffer- 
ence of  the  Turkish  artillery  that  with  such 
naked  concentrations  of  men  scattered  about 
the  Peninsula,  casualties  in  the  rest-camps  were 
so  few. 

Each  officer  had  his  own  private  hole,  set 
democratically  among  the  men's;  and  an  offi- 
cers' mess  was  simply  made  by  digging  a  larger 
hole,  and  roofing  it  with  two  waterproof  sheets 
instead  of  one.  There  was  no  luxury  among 
the  infantry  there,  and  the  gulf  which  yawns 
between  the  lives  of  officer  and  man  in  France 
as  regards  material  comfort  was  barely  dis- 
cernible in  Gallipoli.  Food  was  dull  and 

[33] 


The  Secret  Battle 

monotonous :  for  weeks  we  had  only  bully-beef 
and  biscuits,  and  a  little  coarse  bacon  and  tea, 
but  it  was  the  same  for  all,  one  honourable 
equality  of  discomfort.  At  first  there  were 
no  canteen  facilities,  and  when  some  newcomer 
came  from  one  of  the  islands  with  a  bottle  of 
champagne  and  another  of  chartreuse,  we 
drank  it  with  "bully"  and  cast-iron  biscuit. 
Drinking  water  was  as  precious  as  the  elixir  of 
life,  and  almost  as  unobtainable,  but  officer  and 
man  had  the  same  ration  to  eke  out  through  the 
thirsty  day.  Wells  were  sunk,  and  sometimes 
immediately  condemned,  and  when  we  knew 
the  water  was  clear  and  sweet  to  taste,  it  was 
hard  to  have  it  corrupted  with  the  metallic  fla- 
vour of  chemicals  by  the  medical  staff.  Then 
indeed  did  a  man  learn  to  love  water;  then 
did  he  learn  discipline,  when  he  filled  his 
water-bottle  in  the  morning  with  the  exiguous 
ration  of  the  day,  and  fought  with  the  intol- 
erable craving  to  put  it  to  his  lips  and  there 
and  then  gurgle  down  his  fill. 

In  the  spring  nights  it  was  very  cold,  and 
men  shivered  in  their  single  blanket  under  the 
unimaginable  stars;  but  very  early  the  sun 

[34] 


The  Secret  Battle 

came  up,  and  by  five  o'clock  all  the  camp  were 
singing;  and  there  were  three  hours  of  fresh 
coolness  when  it  was  very  good  to  wash  in  a 
canvas  bucket,  and  smoke  in  the  sun  before 
the  torrid  time  came  on;  and  again  at  seven, 
when  the  sun  sat  perched  on  the  great  rock  of 
Samothrace,  and  Imbros  was  set  in  a  fleecy 
marvel  of  pink  and  saffron  clouds,  there  were 
two  hours  of  pure  physical  content;  but  these, 
I  think,  were  more  nearly  perfect  than  the 
morning  because  they  succeeded  the  irritable 
fevers  of  the  day.  Then  the  crickets  in  the 
branches  sang  less  tediously,  and  the  flies 
melted  away,  and  all  over  the  Peninsula  the 
wood  fires  began  to  twinkle  in  the  dusk,  as  the 
men  cooked  over  a  few  sticks  the  little  deli- 
cacies which  were  preserved  for  this  hour  of 
respite.  When  we  had  done  we  sat  under  our 
olive-tree  in  the  clear  twilight,  and  watched 
the  last  aeroplanes  sail  home  to  Rabbit  Islands, 
and  talked  and  argued  till  the  glow-worms 
glimmering  in  the  scrub,  and  up  the  hill  the 
long  roll  of  the  Turks'  rapid  fire,  told  us  that 
darkness  was  at  hand,  and  the  chill  dew  sent 
us  into  our  crannies  to  sleep. 

[35] 


The  Secret  Battle 

So  we  were  not  sorry  for  three  days  of  quiet 
in  the  camp  before  we  went  up  the  hill ;  Harry 
alone  was  all  eagerness  to  reach  the  firing-line 
with  the  least  possible  delay.  But  then  Harry 
was  like  none  of  us;  indeed,  none  of  us  were 
like  each  other.  It  would  have  been  strange 
if  we  had  been.  War-chroniclers  have  noted 
with  an  accent  of  astonishment  the  strange  di- 
versity of  persons  to  be  found  in  units  of  the 
New  Army,  and  the  essential  sameness  of  their 
attitude  to  the  war.  As  though  a  man  were 
to  go  into  the  Haymarket  and  be  surprised  if 
the  first  twelve  pedestrians  there  were  not  of 
the  same  profession;  were  then  to  summon 
them  to  the  assistance  of  a  woman  in  the  hands 
of  a  rough,  and  be  still  surprised  at  the  simi- 
larity of  their  methods. 

We  were,  in  truth,  a  motley  crowd,  gath- 
ered from  everywhere;  but  when  we  sat  under 
that  olive-tree  we  were  very  much  alike — with 
the  single  exception  of  Harry. 

Egerton,  our  company  commander,  a  man 
of  about  thirty,  with  a  round  face  and  a  large 
head,  was  a  stockbroker  by  profession,  and 
rather  improbably,  an  old  Territorial  by 

[36] 


The  Secret  Battle 

pastime.  He  was  an  excellent  company  com- 
mander, but  would  have  made  a  still  more  ad- 
mirable second-in-command,  for  his  training 
in  figures  and  his  meticulous  habits  in  such 
things  as  the  keeping  of  accounts  were  just 
what  is  required  of  a  second-in-command,  and 
were  lamentably  deficient  in  myself.  The  in- 
tricacies of  Acquittance  Rolls  and  Imprest  Ac- 
counts, and  page  3  of  the  Soldier's  Pay-Book, 
were  meat  and  drink  to  him,  and  in  general  I 
must  confess  that  I  shamefully  surrendered 
such  delicacies  to  him. 

Harry  Penrose  had  the  I4th  Platoon.  Of 
the  other  three  subalterns  perhaps  the  most 
interesting  was  Hewett.  He,  like  Harry,  had 
been  at  Oxford  before  the  war,  though  they 
had  never  come  together  there.  He  was  a 
fair,  dreamy  person,  of  remarkably  good  looks. 
Alone  of  all  the  "young  Apollos"  I  have  known 
did  he  at  all  deserve  that  title.  Most  of  these 
have  been  men  of  surpassing  stupidity  and 
material  tastes,  but  Hewett  added  to  his  physi- 
cal qualifications  something  of  the  mental  re- 
finement which  presumably  one  should  expect 
of  even  a  modern  Apollo.  Intensely  fastidi- 

[37] 


The  Secret  Battle 

ous,  he  frankly  detested  the  war,  and  all  the 
dirt  and  disgust  he  must  personally  encounter. 
Like  Harry,  he  was  an  idealist — but  more  so; 
for  he  could  not  idealize  the  war.  But  the 
shrinking  of  his  spirit  had  no  effect  on  his  con- 
duct: he  was  no  less  courageous  than  Harry 
or  any  one  else,  and  no  less  keen  to  see  the 
thing  through.  Only,  at  that  time,  he  was  a 
little  less  blind.  A  year  senior  to  Harry,  he 
had  taken  Greats  in  1914,  and  though  his 
degree  had  been  disappointingly  low  he  had 
not  yet  lost  the  passionate  attachment  of  the 
"Greats"  man  to  philosophy  and  thoughts  of 
the  Ultimate  Truths.  Sometimes  he  would 
try  to  induce  one  of  us  to  talk  with  him  of  his 
religious  and  philosophical  doubts;  but  in  that 
feverish  place  it  was  too  difficult  for  us,  and 
usually  he  brooded  over  his  problems  alone. 

Eustace,  of  the  i6th  Platoon,  was  a  journal- 
ist by  repute,  though  it  was  never  discovered 
to  what  journal,  if  any,  he  was  specially  at- 
tached. His  character  was  more  attractive 
than  his  appearance,  which  was  long,  awk- 
ward, and  angular;  and  if  he  had  ever  been  to 
school,  he  would  have  been  quite  undeservedly 

[38] 


The  Secret  Battle 

unpopular  for  not  playing  games:  undeserv- 
edly— because  one  could  not  conceive  of  him 
as  playing  any  game.  Physically,  indeed,  he 
was  one  of  Nature's  gawks;  intellectually  he 
was  nimble,  not  to  say  athletic,  with  an  acute 
and  deeply  logical  mind.  As  a  companion, 
more  especially  a  companion  in  war,  he  was 
made  tedious  by  a  habit  of  cynicism  and  a  pas- 
sion for  argument.  The  cynicism,  I  think, 
had  developed  originally  from  some  early 
grievance  against  Society,  had  been  adopted 
as  an  effective  pose,  and  had  now  become  part 
of  his  nature.  Whatever  its  origin  it  was 
wearing  to  us,  for  in  the  actual  scenes  of  war 
one  likes  to  cling  to  one's  illusions  while  any 
shred  of  them  remains,  and  would  rather  they 
faded  honourably  under  the  gentle  influence 
of  time  than  be  torn  to  fragments  in  a  moment 
by  reasoned  mockery.  But  Eustace  was  never 
tired  of  exhibiting  the  frailty  and  subterfuge 
of  all  men,  particularly  in  their  relations  to 
the  war;  the  Nation  arrived  for  him  as  regu- 
larly as  the  German  submarines  would  allow, 
and  all  his  views  were  in  that  sense  distinctly 
"National."  If  any  of  us  were  rash  enough 

[39] 


The  Secret  Battle 

to  read  that  paper  ourselves,  we  were  inevit- 
ably provoked  to  some  comment  which  led  to 
a  hot  wrangle  on  the  Public  Schools,  or  Kitch- 
ener, or  the  rights  of  the  war,  and  the  pleasant 
calm  of  the  dusk  was  marred.  For  Eustace 
could  always  meet  us  with  a  powerfully  log- 
ical case,  and  while  in  spirit  we  revolted 
against  his  heresies,  we  were  distressed  by  the 
appeal  they  made  to  our  reluctant  reasons. 
Harry,  the  most  ingenuous  of  us  all  and  the 
most  devoted  to  his  illusions,  was  particularly 
worried  by  this  conflict.  It  seemed  very 
wrong  to  him  that  a  man  so  loyal  and  gallant 
in  his  personal  relations  with  others  should 
trample  so  ruthlessly  on  their  dearest  opinions. 
Burnett  was  of  a  very  different  type.  Tall 
and  muscular,  with  reddish  hair  and  vivid  blue 
eyes,  he  looked  (as  he  wanted  to  look)  a  "man 
of  action"  by  nature  and  practice.  He  had 
"knocked  about"  for  some  years  in  Africa  and 
Australia  (a  process  which  had  failed  equally 
to  establish  his  fortunes  or  soften  his  rough 
edges),  and  from  the  first  he  affected  the 
patronizing  attitude  of  the  experienced  cam- 
paigner. The  little  discomforts  of  camp  life 

[40] 


The  Secret  Battle 

were  nothing  to  him,  for  were  they  not  part 
of  his  normal  life?  And  when  I  emerged 
from  my  dug-out  pursued  by  a  centipede  of 
incredible  ferocity,  he  held  forth  for  a  long 
time  on  the  best  method  of  dispatching  rattle- 
snakes in  the  Umgoga,  or  some  such  locality. 
By  degrees,  however,  as  life  became  more  un- 
bearable, the  conviction  dawned  upon  us  that 
he  was  no  less  sensible  to  heat  and  hunger  and 
thirst  than  mere  "temporary"  campaigners, 
and  rather  more  ready  to  utter  his  complaints. 
Finally,  the  weight  of  evidence  became  over- 
whelming, and  it  was  whispered  at  the  end  of 
our  first  week  at  Gallipoli  that  "Burnett  was 
bogus."  The  quality  of  being  "bogus"  was 
in  those  days  the  last  word  in  military  con- 
demnation; and  in  Burnett's  case  events 
showed  the  verdict  to  be  lamentably  correct. 
So  we  were  a  strangely  assorted  crowd,  only 
alike,  as  I  have  said,  in  that  we  were  keen  on 
the  winning  of  this  war  and  resolved  to  do  our 
personal  best  towards  that  end.  Of  the  five 
of  us,  Hewett  and  Eustace  had  the  most  in- 
fluence on  Harry.  Me  he  regarded  as  a  solid 
kind  of  wall  that  would  never  let  him  down, 


The  Secret  Battle 

or  be  guilty  of  any  startling  deviations  from 
the  normal.  By  Hewett  he  was  personally 
and  spiritually  attracted;  by  Eustace  alter- 
nately fascinated  and  disturbed.  And  it  was 
a  very  bad  day  for  Harry  when  Hewett's  death 
removed  that  gentle,  comfortable  influence. 

II 

We  were  ordered  to  relieve  the  7s  at 

midnight  on  the  fourth  day,  and  once  again 
we  braced  ourselves  for  the  last  desperate  bat- 
tle of  our  lives.  All  soldiers  go  through  this 
process  during  their  first  weeks  of  active  serv- 
ice every  time  they  "move"  anywhere.  Im- 
mense expectations,  vows,  fears,  prayers,  fill 
their  minds;  and  nothing  particular  happens. 
Only  the  really  experienced  soldier  knows  that 
it  is  the  exception  and  not  the  rule  for  anything 
particular  to  happen;  and  the  heroes  of  ro- 
mance and  history  who  do  not  move  a  muscle 
when  told  that  they  are  to  attack  at  dawn  are 
generally  quite  undeserving  of  praise,  since 
long  experience  has  taught  them  that  the  at- 
tack is  many  times  more  likely  to  be  cancelled 
than  to  occur.  Until  it  actually  does  happen 

[42] 


The  Secret  Battle 

they  will  not  believe  in  it;  they  make  all  proper 
preparations,  but  quite  rightly  do  not  move  a 
muscle.  We,  however,  were  now  to  have  our 
first  illustration  of  this  great  military  truth. 
For,  indeed,  we  were  to  have  no  battle.  Yet 
that  night's  march  to  the  trenches  was  an  ex- 
perience that  made  full  compensation.  It  was 
already  dusk  when  we  moved  out  of  the  rest- 
camp,  and  the  moon  was  not  up.  As  usual  in 
new  units,  the  leading  platoons  went  off  at  a 
reckless  canter,  and  stumbling  after  them  in 
the  gathering  shadows  over  rocky,  precipitous 
slopes,  and  in  and  out  of  the  clumps  of  bush, 
falling  in  dark  holes  on  to  indignant  sleepers, 
or  maddeningly  entangled  in  hidden  strands 
of  wire,  the  rear  companies  were  speedily  out 
of  touch.  To  a  heavily  laden  infantryman 
there  are  few  things  more  exasperating  than  a 
night  march  into  the  line  conducted  too  fast. 
If  the  country  be  broken  and  strewn  with  ob- 
stacles, at  which  each  man  must  wait  while 
another  climbs  or  drops  or  wrestles  or  wades 
in  front  of  him,  and  must  then  laboriously 
scamper  after  him  in  the  shadows  lest  he,  and 
thereby  all  those  behind  him,  be  lost;  if  the 

[43] 


The  Secret  Battle 

country  be  unknown  to  him,  so  that,  apart  from 
purely  military  considerations,  the  fear  of  be- 
ing lost  is  no  small  thing,  for  a  man  knows  that 
he  may  wander  all  night  alone  in  the  dark, 
surrounded  by  unknown  dangers,  cut  off  from 
sleep,  and  rations,  and  the  friendly  voices  of 
companions,  a  jest  among  them  when  he  dis- 
covers them:  then  such  a  march  becomes  a 
nightmare. 

On  this  night  it  dawned  gradually  on  those 
in  front  that  they  were  unaccompanied  save 
by  the  ist  platoon,  and  a  long  halt,  and  much 
shouting  and  searching,  gathered  most  of  the 
regiment  together,  hot,  cursing,  and  already 
exhausted.  And  now  we  passed  the  five  white 
Water  Towers,  standing  mysteriously  in  a 
swamp,  and  came  out  of  the  open  country  into 
the  beginning  of  a  gully.  These  "gullies" 
were  deep,  steep-sided  ravines,  driven  through 
all  the  lower  slopes  of  Achi  Baba,  and  carry- 
ing in  the  spring  a  thin  stream  of  water,  peo- 
pled by  many  frogs,  down  to  the  Straits  or  the 
sea.  It  was  easier  going  here,  for  there  was 
a  rough  track  beside  the  stream  to  follow ;  yet, 
though  those  in  front  were  marching,  as  they 

[44] 


The  Secret  Battle 

thought,  with  inconceivable  deliberation,  the 
rear  men  of  each  platoon  were  doubling  round 
the  corners  among  the  trees,  and  cursing  as 
they  ran.  There  was  then  a  wild  hail  of  bul- 
lets in  all  those  gullies,  since  for  many  hours 
of  each  night  the  Turk  kept  up  a  sustained  and 
terrible  rapid  fire  from  his  trenches  far  up  the 
hill,  and,  whether  by  design  or  bad  shooting, 
the  majority  of  these  bullets  passed  high  over 
our  trenches,  and  fell  hissing  in  the  gully-bed. 
So  now  all  the  air  seemed  full  of  the  hum- 
ming, whistling  things,  and  all  round  in  the 
gully-banks  and  the  bushes  by  the  stream  there 
were  vicious  spurts  as  they  fell.  It  was  always 
a  marvel  how  few  casualties  were  caused  by 
this  stray  fire,  and  tonight  we  were  chiefly  im- 
pressed with  this  wonder.  In  the  stream  the 
frogs  croaked  incessantly  with  a  note  of  weary 
indifference  to  the  medley  of  competing  noises. 
At  one  point  there  was  a  kind  of  pot-hole  in 
the  stream  where  the  water  squeezing  through 
made  a  kind  of  high-toned  wail,  delivered 
with  stabbing  emphasis  at  regular  intervals. 
So  weird  was  this  sound,  which  could  be  heard 
many  hundred  yards  away,  and  gradually  as- 

[45] 


The  Secret  Battle 

serted  itself  above  all  other  contributions  to 
that  terrible*din,  that  many  of  the  men,  already 
mystified  and  excited,  said  to  themselves  that 
this  was  the  noise  of  the  hideous  explosive  bul- 
lets of  which  they  had  heard. 

Soon  we  were  compelled  to  climb  out  of 
the  gully-path  to  make  way  for  some  descend- 
ing troops,  and  stumbled  forward  with  a  curi- 
ous feeling  of  nakedness  high  up  in  open 
ground.  Here  the  bullets  were  many  times 
multiplied,  and  many  of  us  said  that  we  could 
feel  them  passing  between  us.  Indeed,  one 
or  two  men  were  hit,  but  though  we  did  not 
know  it,  most  of  these  near-sounding  bullets 
flew  high  above  us.  After  a  little  we  were 
halted,  and  lay  down,  wondering,  in  the  sibi- 
lant dark;  then  we  moved  on  and  halted  again, 
and  realized  suddenly  that  we  were  very  tired. 
At  the  head  of  the  column  the  guide  had  lost 
his  way,  and  could  not  find  the  entrance  to  the 
communication  trench;  and  here  in  the  most 
exposed  area  of  all  that  Peninsula  we  must 
wait  until  he  did.  The  march  was  an  unavoid- 
able piece  of  mismanagement;  the  whole  regi- 
ment was  being  unnecessarily  endangered. 

[46] 


The  Secret  Battle 

But  none  of  this  we  knew;  so  very  few  men 
were  afraid.  For  we  were  still  in  the  bliss  of 
ignorance.  It  seemed  to  us  that  these  strange 
proceedings  must  be  a  part  of  the  everyday 
life  of  the  soldier.  If  they  were  not,  we  raw 
creatures  should  not  have  been  asked  to  endure 
them.  We  had  no  standard  of  safety  or  dan- 
ger by  which  to  estimate  our  position;  and  so 
the  miraculous  immunity  we  were  enjoying 
was  taken  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  we  were 
blissfully  unafraid.  At  the  same  time  we 
were  extremely  bored  and  tired,  and  the  sweat 
cooled  on  us  in  the  chill  night  air.  And  when 
at  last  we  came  into  the  deep  communication 
trench  we  felt  that  the  end  of  this  weariness 
must  surely  be  near.  But  the  worst  exaspera- 
tions of  relieving  an  unknown  line  were  still 
before  us.  It  was  a  two-mile  trudge  in  the  nar- 
row ditches  to  the  front  line.  No  war  corre- 
spondent has  ever  described  such  a  march ;  it  is 
not  included  in  the  official  "horrors  of  war"; 
but  this  is  the  kind  of  thing  which,  more  than 
battle  and  blood,  harasses  the  spirit  of  the  in- 
fantryman, and  composes  his  life.  The  com- 
munication trenches  that  night  were  good  and 

[47] 


The  Secret  Battle 

deep  and  dry,  and  free  from  the  awfulness  of 
mud;  but  they  were  very  few,  and  unintelli- 
gently  used.  There  had  been  an  attack  that 
day,  and  coming  by  the  same  trench  was  a  long 
stream  of  stretchers  and  wounded  men,  and 
odd  parties  coming  to  fetch  water  from  the 
well,  and  whole  battalions  relieved  from  other 
parts  of  the  line.  Our  men  had  been  sent  up 
insanely  with  full  packs ;  for  a  man  so  equipped 
to  pass  another  naked  in  the  narrow  ditch 
would  have  been  difficult;  when  all  those  that 
he  meets  have  also  straps  and  hooks  and  ex- 
crescences about  them,  each  separate  encoun- 
ter means  heart-breaking  entanglements  and 
squeezes  and  sudden  paroxysms  of  rage. 
That  night  we  stood  a  total  of  hours  hope- 
lessly jammed  in  the  suffocating  trench,  with 
other  troops  trying  to  get  down.  A  man  stood 
in  those  crushes,  unable  to  sit  down,  unable  to 
lean  comfortably  against  the  wall  because  of 
his  pack,  unable  even  to  get  his  hand  to  his 
water-bottle  and  quench  his  intolerable  thirst, 
unable  almost  to  breathe  for  the  hot  smell  of 
herded  humanity.  Only  a  thin  ribbon  of  stars 
overhead,  remotely  roofing  his  prison,  re- 

[48] 


The  Secret  Battle 

minded  him  that  indeed  he  was  still  in  the  liv- 
ing world  and  not  pursuing  some  hideous 
nightmare.  At  long  last  some  one  would  take 
charge  of  the  situation,  and  by  sheer  muscular 
fighting  for  space  the  two  masses  would  be 
extricated.  Then  one  moved  on  again.  And 
now  each  man  has  become  a  mere  lifeless  au- 
tomaton. Every  few  yards  there  is  a  wire 
hanging  across  the  trench  at  the  height  of  a 
man's  eyes,  and  he  runs  blindly  into  it,  or  it 
catches  in  the  piling-swivel  of  his  rifle;  pain- 
fully he  removes  it,  or  in  a  fit  of  fury  tears 
the  wire  away  with  him.  Or  there  is  a  man 
lying  in  a  corner  with  a  wounded  leg  crying 
out  to  each  passer-by  not  to  tread  on  him,  or 
a  stretcher  party  slowly  struggling  against  the 
tide.  Mechanically  each  man  grapples  with 
these  obstacles,  mechanically  repeats  the  cease- 
less messages  that  are  passed  up  and  down,  and 
the  warning  "Wire,"  "Stretcher  party,"  "Step 
up,"  to  those  behind,  and  stumbles  on.  He  is 
only  conscious  of  the  dead  weight  of  his  load, 
and  the  braces  of  his  pack  biting  into  his 
shoulders,  of  his  thirst,  and  the  sweat  of  his 
body,  and  the  longing  to  lie  down  and  sleep. 

[49] 


The  Secret  Battle 

When  we  halt  men  fall  into  a  doze  as  they 
stand,  and  curse  pitifully  when  they  are  urged 
on  from  behind. 

We  reach  the  inhabited  part  of  the  line, 
and  the  obstacles  become  more  frequent,  for 
there  are  traverses  every  ten  yards  and  men 
sleeping  on  the  floor,  and  a  litter  of  rifles, 
water-cans,  and  scattered  equipment.  For 
ever  we  wind  round  the  endless  traverses,  and 
squeeze  past  the  endless  host  we  are  relieving; 
and  sometimes  the  parapet  is  low  or  broken 
or  thin,  or  there  is  a  dangerous  gap,  and  we 
are  told  to  keep  our  heads  down,  and  dully 
pass  back  the  message  so  that  it  reaches  men 
meaninglessly  when  they  have  passed  the  dan- 
ger-point, or  are  still  far  from  it.  All  the 
time  there  is  a  wild  rattle  of  rapid  fire  from 
the  Turks,  and  bullets  hammer  irritably  on  the 
parapet,  or  fly  singing  overhead.  When  a 
man  reached  his  destined  part  of  the  trench 
that  night  there  were  still  long  minutes  of 
exasperation  before  him;  for  we  were  inex- 
perienced troops,  and  first  of  all  the  men 
crowded  in  too  far  together,  and  must  turn 
about,  and  press  back  so  as  to  cover  the  whole 

[50] 


The  Secret  Battle 

ground  to  be  garrisoned;  then  they  would 
flock  like  sad  sheep  too  far  in  the  opposite  di- 
rection. This  was  the  subaltern's  bad  time; 
for  the  officer  must  squeeze  backwards  and 
forwards,  struggling  to  dispose  properly  his 
own  sullen  platoon,  and  it  was  hard  for  him 
to  be  patient  with  their  stupidity,  for,  like 
them,  he  only  longed  to  fling  off  his  cursed 
equipment  and  lie  down  and  sleep  for  ever. 
He,  like  them,  had  but  one  thought,  that  if 
there  were  to  be  no  release  from  the  hateful 
burden  that  clung  to  his  back,  and  cut  into  his 
shoulders  and  ceaselessly  impeded  him,  if  there 
were  to  be  no  relief  for  his  thirst  and  the  ur- 
gent aching  of  all  his  body — he  must  soon  sink 
down  and  scream.  .  .  . 

Ill 

Harry's  platoon  was  settled  in  when  I  found 
him,  hidden  away  somewhere  in  the  third  (Re- 
serve) line.  He  had  conscientiously  posted  a 
few  sentries,  and  done  all  those  things  which 
a  good  platoon  commander  should  do,  and 
was  lying  himself  in  a  sort  of  stupor  of  fatigue. 
Physically  he  was  not  strong,  rather  frail,  in 


The  Secret  Battle 

fact,  for  the  infantry;  he  had  a  narrow  chest 
and  slightly  round  shoulders,  and  his  heart 
would  not  have  passed  any  civilian  doctor; 
and — from  my  own  experience — I  knew  that 
the  march  must  have  tried  him  terribly.  But 
a  little  rest  had  soothed  the  intense  nervous 
irritation  whose  origins  I  have  tried  to  de- 
scribe, and  his  spirit  was  as  sturdy  as  ever. 
He  struggled  to  his  feet  and  leaned  over  the 
parados  with  me.  The  moon  was  now  high 
up  in  the  north-east;  the  Turks  had  ceased 
their  rapid  fire  at  moonrise,  and  now  an  im- 
mense peace  wrapped  the  Peninsula.  We 
were  high  up  on  the  centre  slopes  of  Achi 
Baba,  and  all  the  six  miles  which  other  men 
had  conquered  lay  bathed  in  moonlight  below 
us.  Far  away  at  the  cape  we  could  see  the 
long,  green  lights  of  the  hospital  ships,  and  all 
about  us  were  glow-worms  in  the  scrub.  Left 
and  right  the  pale  parapets  of  trenches  crept 
like  dim-seen  snakes  into  the  little  valleys,  and 
vanished  over  the  opposite  slopes.  Only  a 
cruiser  off  shore  firing  lazily  at  long  intervals 
disturbed  the  slumberous  stillness.  No  better 
sedative  could  have  been  desired. 

[52] 


The  Secret  Battle 

"How  did  you  like  the  march?"  I  said. 

"Oh,  all  right;  one  of  my  men  was  wounded, 
I  believe,  but  I  didn't  see  him." 

"All  right?"  I  said.  "Personally  I  thought 
it  was  damned  awful ;  it's  a  marvel  that  any 
of  us  are  here  at  all.  I  hear  A  Company's 
still  adrift,  as  it  is." 

"Well,  anyhow  <we  got  here,"  said  Harry. 
"What  a  wonderful  spot  this  is.  And  look  at 
those  damned  glow-worms." 

I  was  anxious  to  know  what  impression  the 
night  had  made  on  Harry,  but  these  and  other 
answers  gave  me  no  real  clue.  I  had  a  sus- 
picion that  it  had,  in  truth,  considerably  dis- 
tressed him,  but  any  such  effect  had  clearly 
given  way  to  the  romantic  appeal  of  the  quiet 
moon.  I,  too,  was  enjoying  the  sense  of  peace, 
but  I  was  still  acutely  conscious  of  the  un- 
pleasantness of  the  night's  proceedings;  and  a 
certain  envy  took  hold  of  me  at  this  youth's 
capacity  to  concentrate  on  the  attractive 
shadow  of  distasteful  things.  There  was  a 
heavy,  musty  smell  over  all  this  part  of  the 
trench,  the  smell  of  a  dead  Turk  lying  just 
over  the  parapet,  and  it  occurred  to  me,  ma- 

[53] 


The  Secret  Battle 

liciously,  to  wake  Harry  from  his  dreams, 
and  bring  home  to  him  the  reality  of  things. 

"Funny  smell  youVe  got  here,  Harry,"  I 
said;  "know  what  it  is?" 

"Yes,  it's  cactus  or  amaryllis,  or  one  of 
those  funny  plants  they  have  here,  isn't  it?  I 
read  about  it  in  the  papers." 

This  was  too  much.  "It's  a  dead  Turk," 
I  told  him,  with  a  wicked  anticipation  of  the 
effect  I  should  produce. 

The  effect,  however,  was  not  what  I  ex- 
pected. 

"No!"  said  Harry,  with  obvious  elation. 
"Let's  find  the  devil." 

Forthwith  he  swarmed  over  the  parapet, 
full  of  life  again,  nosed  about  till  he  found 
the  reeking  thing,  and  gazed  on  it  with  un- 
disguised interest.  No  sign  of  horror  or  dis- 
gust could  I  detect  in  him.  Yet  it  was  not 
pure  ghoulishness;  it  was  simply  the  boy's 
greed  for  experience  and  the  savour  of  ad- 
venture. Anyhow,  my  experiment  had  failed ; 
and  I  found  that  I  was  glad.  But  when  I 
was  leaving  him  for  the  next  platoon,  he  was 
lying  down  for  a  little  sleep  on  the  dirty  floor 

[54] 


The  Secret  Battle 

of  the  trench,  and  as  he  flashed  his  electric 
torch  over  the  ground,  I  saw  several  small 
white  objects  writhing  in  the  dust.  The  com- 
pany commander  whom  we  had  relieved  had 
told  me  how  under  all  these  trenches  the  Turks 
and  the  French  had  buried  many  of  their  dead, 
and  in  a  moment  of  nauseating  insight  I  knew 
that  these  things  were  the  maggots  which  fed 
upon  their  bodies. 

"Harry,"  I  said,  "you  can't  sleep  there;  look 
at  those  things!"  And  I  told  him  what  they 
were. 

"Rubbish,"  he  said,  "they're  glow-worm's 
gone  to  sleep." 

Well,  then  I  left  him.  But  that's  how  he 
was  in  those  days. 


[55] 


Ill 

SO  many  men  have  written  descriptions 
of  trench  life  in  France;  there  have 
been  so  many  poems,  plays,  and  speeches 
about  it  that  the  majority  of  our  nation  must 
have  a  much  clearer  mental  picture  of  life  on 
the  Western  Front  than  they  have  of  life  at 
the  Savoy,  or  life  in  East  Ham.     But  the 
Gallipoli  Peninsula  was  never  part  of  the 
Western  Front,  and  no  man  came  back  from 
that  place  on  leave;  lucky,  indeed,  if  he  came 
at  all.     The  campaign  was  never,  for  obvious 
reasons,  an  important  item  in  the  official  propa- 
ganda, and  the  various  non-official  agencies 
which  now  bring  home  the  war  to  Streatham 
had  not  begun  to  articulate  when  the  cam- 
paign came  to  an  end.     And  so  neither  Streat- 
ham nor  any  one  else  knew  anything  about  it. 
And  though  for  a  soldier  to  speak,  however 
distantly,   of    the    details   of    trench   life   in 
France,  is  now  in  some  circles  considered  a 

[56] 


The  Secret  Battle 

solecism  equivalent  to  the  talking  of  "shop," 
I  hope  I  may  still  without  offence  make  some 
brief  reference  to  the  trenches  of  the  Penin- 
sula. For,  in  truth,  it  was  all  very  different. 
Above  all,  from  dawn  to  dawn  it  was  genuine 
infantry  warfare.  In  France,  apart  from  full- 
dress  attacks,  an  infantryman  may  live  for 
many  months  without  once  firing  his  rifle,  or 
running  the  remotest  risk  of  death  by  a  rifle 
bullet.  Patiently  he  tramps,  and  watches, 
and  digs,  and  is  shelled,  clinging  fondly  to  his 
rifle  night  and  day,  but  seldom  or  never  in  a 
position  to  use  it;  so  that  in  the  stagnant  days 
of  the  past  he  came  to  look  upon  it  as  a  mere 
part  of  his  equipment,  like  his  water-bottle, 
only  heavier  and  less  comforting;  and  in  real 
emergencies  fumbled  stupidly  with  the  unfa- 
miliar mechanism.  This  was  true  for  a  long 
time  of  the  normal,  or  "peace-time,"  sectors 
of  France. 

But  in  those  hill-trenches  of  Gallipoli  the 
Turk  and  the  Gentile  fought  with  each  other 
all  day  with  rifle  and  bomb,  and  in  the  eve- 
ning crept  out  and  stabbed  each  other  in  the 
dark.  There  was  no  release  from  the  strain 

[57] 


The  Secret  Battle 

of  watching  and  listening  and  taking  thought. 
The  Turk  was  always  on  higher  ground;  he 
knew  every  inch  of  all  those  valleys  and  vine- 
yards and  scrub-strewn  slopes;  and  he  had  an 
uncanny  accuracy  of  aim.  Moreover,  many 
of  his  men  had  the  devotion  of  fanatics,  which 
inspired  them  to  lie  out  behind  our  lines,  with 
stores  of  food  enough  to  last  out  their  am- 
munition, certain  only  of  their  own  ultimate 
destruction,  but  content  to  lie  there  and  pick 
off  the  infidels  till  they  too  died.  They  were 
very  brave  men.  But  the  Turkish  snipers 
were  not  confined  to  the  madmen  who  were 
caught  disguised  as  trees  in  the  broad  day- 
light and  found  their  way  into  the  picture  pa- 
pers. Every  trench  was  full  of  snipers,  less 
theatrical,  but  no  less  effective.  And  in  the 
night  they  crept  out  with  unbelievable  stealth 
and  lay  close  in  to  our  lines,  killing  our  sen- 
tries, and  chipping  away  our  crumbling  para- 
pets. 

So  the  sniping  was  terrible.  In  that  first 
week  we  lost  twelve  men  each  day;  they  fell 
without  a  sound  in  the  early  morning  as  they 
stood  up  from  their  cooking  at  the  brazier, 

[58] 


The  Secret  Battle 

fell  shot  through  the  head,  and  lay  snoring 
horribly  in  the  dust;  they  were  sniped  as  they 
came  up  the  communication  trench  with  water, 
or  carelessly  raised  their  heads  to  look  back 
at  the  ships  in  the  bay;  and  in  the  night  there 
were  sudden  screams  where  a  sentry  had 
moved  his  head  too  often  against  the  moon. 
If  a  periscope  were  raised,  however  furtively, 
it  was  shivered  in  an  instant;  if  a  man  peered 
over  himself,  he  was  dead.  Far  back  in  the 
Reserve  Lines  or  at  the  wells,  where  a  man 
thought  himself  hidden  from  view,  the  sniper 
saw  and  killed  him.  All  along  the  line  were 
danger-posts  where  many  had  been  hit;  these 
places  became  invested  with  a  peculiar  awe, 
and  as  you  came  to  them  the  men  said,  "Keep 
low  here,  sir,"  in  a  mysterious  whisper,  as 
though  the  Turk  could  hear  them.  Indeed, 
so  uncanny  were  many  of  the  deaths,  that  some 
men  said  that  the  Turk  could  see  impos- 
sibly through  the  walls  of  the  trench,  and 
crouched  nervously  in  the  bottom.  All  the 
long  communication  trenches  were  watched, 
and  wherever  a  head  or  a  moving  rifle  showed 
at  a  gap  a  bullet  came  with  automatic  regu- 

[59] 


The  Secret  Battle 

larity.  Going  down  a  communication-trench 
alone  a  man  would  hear  the  tap  of  these  bul- 
lets on  the  parapet  following  him  along,  and 
break  into  a  half-hysterical  run  in  the  bright 
sunlight  to  get  away  from  this  unnatural  pur- 
suit; for  such  it  seemed  to  him  to  be. 

The  fire  seemed  to  come  from  all  angles; 
and  units  bitterly  accused  their  neighbours  of 
killing  their  men  when  it  seemed  impossible 
that  any  Turk  could  have  fired  the  shot. 

For  a  little,  then,  this  sniping  was  thor- 
oughly on  the  men's  nerves.  Nothing  in  their 
training  had  prepared  them  for  it.  They 
hated  the  "blinded"  feeling  it  produced;  it 
was  demoralizing  always  to  be  wondering  if 
one's  head  was  low  enough,  always  to  walk 
with  a  stoop;  it  was  tiring  to  be  always  taking 
care;  and  it  was  very  dangerous  to  relax  that 
care  for  a  moment.  Something  had  to  be 
done ;  and  the  heavy,  methodical  way  in  which 
these  Tynesiders  of  ours  learned  to  counter 
and  finally  overcome  the  sniper,  is  character- 
istic of  the  nation's  efforts  throughout  this 
war.  The  Turks  were  natural  soldiers,  fight- 
ing in  their  own  country;  more,  they  were 
[60] 


The  Secret  Battle 

natural  scouts.  Our  men  were  ponderous,  un- 
couth pitmen  from  Tyneside  and  the  Clyde. 
But  we  chose  out  a  small  body  of  them  who 
could  shoot  better  than  their  fellows,  and 
called  them  snipers,  and  behold,  they  were 
snipers.  We  gave  them  telescopes,  and  peri- 
scopes, and  observers,  and  set  them  in  odd  cor- 
ners, and  told  them  to  snipe.  And  by  slow 
degrees  they  became  interested  and  active  and 
expert,  and  killed  many  Turks.  The  third 
time  we  came  to  those  trenches  we  could  move 
about  with  comparative  freedom. 

In  all  this  Harry  took  a  leading  part,  for 
the  battalion  scout  officer  was  one  of  the  first 
casualties,  and  Harry,  who  had  had  some 
training  as  a  scout  in  the  ranks,  was  appointed 
in  his  place.  In  this  capacity  he  was  in 
charge  of  the  improvised  snipers,  and  all  day 
moved  about  the  line  from  post  to  post,  en- 
couraging and  correcting.  All  this  he  did 
with  characteristic  energy  and  enthusiasm, 
and  tired  himself  out  with  long  wanderings 
in  the  scorching  sun.  In  those  trenches  all 
movement  was  an  intense  labour.  The  sun 
blazed  always  into  the  suffocating  ditch, 

[61] 


The  Secret  Battle 

where  no  breath  of  air  came;  the  men  not  on 
duty  lay  huddled  wherever  they  could  steal 
an  inch  of  shade,  with  the  flies  crawling  about 
their  eyes  and  open  mouths.  Progress  was 
a  weary  routine  of  squeezing  past  men,  or 
stepping  over  men,  or  running  into  men  round 
corners,  as  one  stooped  to  escape  death.  In 
little  niches  in  the  wall  were  mess-tins  boil- 
ing over  box-wood  fires,  so  that  the  eyes 
smarted  from  their  smoke,  and  the  air  was  full 
of  the  hot  fumes;  and  everywhere  was  the 
stuffy  smell  of  human  flesh.  In  the  heat  of 
the  day  these  things  produced  in  the  healthiest 
man  an  intolerable  irritation  and  fatigue:  to 
a  frail,  sensitive  youth  like  Harry  his  day- 
long rambles  must  have  been  torture;  but 
though  he  too  became  touchy  he  pursued  his 
task  with  determination,  and  would  not  be 
tempted  away.  The  rest  of  us,  when  not  on 
watch,  lay  torpid  all  the  hot  hours  in  the  shal- 
low holes  we  had  scratched  behind  the  trench, 
and  called  Company  Headquarters.  These 
places  were  roofed  only  with  the  inevitable 
waterproof  sheet,  and,  had  there  been  any  se- 
rious shelling,  would  have  been  death-traps. 


The  Secret  Battle 

Into  these  dwellings  came  many  strange  ani- 
mals, driven  from  their  nests  among  the  roots 
of  the  scrub — snakes,  lizards,  and  hideous 
centipedes.  Large,  clumsy,  winged  things, 
which  some  said  were  locusts,  fell  into  the 
trench,  and  for  a  few  hours  strove  vainly  to 
leap  out  again  till  they  were  trampled  to 
death;  they  had  the  colour  of  ivory,  and  shone 
with  bright  tints  in  the  sun  like  shot  silk.  The 
men  found  tortoises  derelict  in  near  shell-holes, 
and  set  them  to  walk  in  the  trench,  and  they 
too  wandered  sadly  about  till  they  disappeared, 
no  man  knew  where.  The  flies  were  not  yet 
at  full  strength,  but  they  were  very  bad;  and 
all  day  we  wrestled  with  thirst.  He  was  a 
lucky  man  who  could  sleep  in  the  daylight 
hours,  and  when  the  cool  evening  came,  beck- 
oning him  to  sleep,  he  must  rise  and  bestir 
himself  for  the  work  of  the  night. 

Then  all  the  line  stirred  with  life  again, 
with  the  cleaning  of  rifles  thick  with  heavy 
dust,  and  the  bustle  of  men  making  ready  to 
"Stand  to  Arms."  Now,  indeed,  could  a  man 
have  slept  when  all  the  pests  of  the  day  had 
been  exorcized  by  the  cool  dusk,  and  the  bitter 

[63] 


The  Secret  Battle 

cold  of  the  midnight  was  not  yet  come.  But 
there  was  no  sleep  for  any  man,  only  watching 
and  digging  and  carrying  and  working  and 
listening.  And  so  soon  as  Achi  Baba  was 
swathed  in  shadow,  and  the  sun  well  down  be- 
hind the  westward  islands,  the  Turk  began  his 
evening  fusillade  of  rapid  fire.  This  was  an 
astonishing  performance.  Night  after  night 
at  this  hour  every  man  in  his  trench  must  have 
blazed  away  till  his  rifle  would  do  its  work  no 
more.  "Rapid  fire"  has  been  a  specialty  of 
the  Turkish  infantryman  since  the  days  of 
Plevna,  and  indeed  he  excels  in  it.  Few  Eng- 
lish units  could  equal  his  performance  for  ten 
minutes;  but  the  Turk  kept  up  the  same  sus- 
tained deafening  volume  of  fire  for  hours  at 
a  stretch,  till  the  moon  came  up  and  allayed 
his  fears.  For  it  was  an  exhibition  of  nerv- 
ousness as  well  as  musketry:  fearful  of  a 
stealthy  assault  in  the  dark,  he  would  not  de- 
sist till  he  could  see  well  across  his  own  wire. 
Captured  orders  by  the  Turkish  High  Com- 
mand repeatedly  forbade  this  reckless  expen- 
diture of  ammunition,  and  sometimes  for  two 
nights  he  would  restrain  himself,  but  in  the 

[64] 


The  Secret  Battle 

early  days  never  for  more.  Our  policy  was 
to  lie  down  in  the  trench,  and  think  sardon- 
ically of  the  ammunition  he  was  wasting;  but 
even  this  was  not  good  for  men's  minds.  Most 
of  the  fire  was  high  and  whizzed  over  into  the 
gullies,  but  many  hundreds  of  all  those  thou- 
sands of  bullets  hit  the  parapet.  There  was 
a  steady,  reiterant  rap  of  them  on  the  sand- 
bags, very  irritating  to  the  nerves,  and  bits  of 
the  parapet  splashed  viciously  into  the  trench 
over  the  crouching  men.  In  that  tornado  of 
sound  a  man  must  shout  to  make  himself  heard 
by  his  friends,  and  this  produced  in  his  mind 
an  uncomfortable  sense  of  isolation;  he  seemed 
cut  off  from  humanity,  and  brooded  secretly 
to  himself.  Safe  he  might  be  in  that  trench, 
but  he  could  not  long  sit  alone  in  that  tem- 
pestuous security  without  imagining  himself 
in  other  circumstances — climbing  up  the  para- 
pet— leaving  the  trench — walking  into  THAT. 
So  on  the  few  murky  nights  when  the  moon 
would  not  show  herself  but  peeped  temptingly 
from  behind  large  bolsters  of  cloud,  so  that 
even  the  Turks  diminished  their  fire,  and  then 
with  a  petulant  crescendo  continued,  men  lay 

[65] 


The  Secret  Battle 

in  the  dust  and  prayed  for  the  moon  to  come. 
So  demoralizing  was  this  fire  that  it  was  not 
easy  to  induce  even  sentries  to  keep  an  effect- 
ive watch.  Not  unnaturally,  they  did  not  like 
lifting  their  heads  to  look  over,  even  for  the 
periodical  peeps  which  were  insisted  upon. 
An  officer  on  his  rounds  wouM  find  them 
standing  on  the  firestep  with  their  heads  well 
below  the  parapet,  but  gazing  intently  into  the 
heart  of  a  sand-bag,  with  the  air  of  a  man 
whom  no  movement  of  the  enemy  can  escape. 
The  officer  must  then  perform  the  melancholy 
rite  of  "showing  the  man  how  safe  it  is." 
This  consisted  in  climbing  up  to  the  firestep, 
and  exposing  an  immoderate  amount  of  his 
head:  gazing  deliberately  at  the  Turks,  and 
striving  to  create  an  impression  of  indifference 
and  calm.  He  then  jumped  down,  shouting 
cheerily,  "That's  the  way,  Thompson,"  and 
walked  off,  thanking  God.  Personally  I  did 
not  like  this  duty.  At  the  best  it  was  an  hy- 
pocrisy. For  the  reluctance  of  the  officer  to 
look  over  was  no  less  acute  than  the  man's; 
and  it  was  one  thing  to  look  for  a  moment  or 
two  and  pass  on,  and  another  to  stand  there 
[66] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  repeat  the  process  at  brief  intervals.  Of- 
ficers performed  this  rite  according  to  their 
several  characters:  Eustace,  for  example,  with 
a  cynical  grin  which  derided,  with  equal  in- 
justice, both  himself  and  his  action;  he  was 
notably  courageous,  and  his  nonchalance  on 
the  parapet  would  have  been  definitely  reas- 
suring to  the  nervous  sentry.  But  his  expres- 
sion and  attitude  said  clearly:  "This  is  all 
damned  nonsense,  my  good  man;  you  don't 
like  standing  up  here,  neither  do  I,  and  neither 
of  us  is  deceiving  the  other  at  all."  Burnett 
did  it  with  genuine  and  ill-concealed  distaste, 
too  hasty  to  be  convincing.  Harry,  alone,  did 
it  with  a  gallant  abandon,  like  a  knight  throw- 
ing down  his  challenge  to  the  enemy;  and  he 
alone  can  have  been  really  inspiring  to  the  re- 
luctant sentry.  He  had  a  keen  dramatic  in- 
stinct, and  in  these  little  scenes  rather  enjoyed 
the  part  of  the  unperturbed  hero  calming  the 
timorous  herd.  Watching  him  once  or  twice 
I  wondered  how  much  was  acting  and  how 
much  real  fearlessness;  if  it  was  acting  he  was 
braver  then  than  most  of  us — but  I  think  it  was 
the  other  just  then. 

[67] 


The  Secret  Battle 

There  were  five  or  six  hours  between  the 
end  of  the  rapid  fire  and  the  "Stand  to"  before 
dawn.  During  these  hours  three  of  the  com- 
pany officers  were  always  on  duty.  We  split 
the  time  in  two,  and  it  was  a  weary  three  hours 
patrolling  the  still  trench,  stumbling  over 
sleeping  men,  sprawled  out  like  dead  in  the 
moonlight,  and  goading  the  tired  sentries  to 
watchfulness.  Terrible  was  the  want  of  sleep. 
The  men  fell  asleep  with  their  heads  against 
the  iron  loopholes,  and,  starting  up  as  the  offi- 
cer shook  them,  swore  that  they  had  never 
nodded.  Only  by  constant  movement  could 
the  officer  be  sure  even  of  himself;  he  dared 
not  sit  for  a  moment  or  lean  in  the  corner  of 
the  traverse,  though  all  his  limbs  ached  for 
rest,  lest  he,  too,  be  found  snoring  at  his  post, 
and  he  and  all  his  men  be  butchered  in  their 
guilty  sleep.  And  so  he  drags  his  sore  feet 
ceaselessly  backwards  and  forwards,  marvel- 
ling at  the  stillness  and  the  stars  and  the 
strange,  musky  night  smell  which  has  crept 
out  of  the  earth.  Far  away  he  can  see  the 
green  lights  of  a  hospital  ship,  and  as  he  looks 
they  begin  to  move  and  dwindle  slowly  into 
[68] 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  distance,  for  she  is  going  home;  and  he 
thinks  of  the  warmth  and  light  and  comfort 
in  that  ship,  and  follows  her  wistfully  with 
his  eyes  till  she  is  gone.  Turning  back  he  sees 
a  sentry,  silent  above  him;  he,  too,  is  watching 
the  ship,  and  each  man  knows  the  other's 
thoughts,  but  they  do  not  speak. 

At  last  comes  the  officer  relieving  him;  cold 
and  irritable  from  his  brief  sleep.  He  is  a 
little  late,  and  they  compare  watches  resent- 
fully; and  unless  they  be  firm  friends,  at  that 
moment  they  hate  each  other.  But  the  one 
who  is  relieved  goes  down  to  the  dug-out  in 
the  Support  Line,  a  little  jauntily  now,  though 
his  feet  are  painful,  feeling  already  that  he 
could  watch  many  hours  more.  And  suddenly 
the  moon  is  beautiful,  and  the  stars  are 
friendly — for  he  is  going  to  sleep.  But  when 
he  comes  to  the  little  narrow  hole,  which  is 
the  dug-out,  there  are  two  officers  already  fill- 
ing most  of  the  floor,  noisily  asleep.  One  of 
them  is  lying  on  his  waterproof  sheet:  he  tugs 
angrily  at  it,  but  it  is  caught  in  something  and 
will  not  come  away.  He  shakes  the  man,  but 
he  does  not  wake.  Too  tired  to  continue  he 

[69] 


The  Secret  Battle 

lies  down  awkwardly  in  the  crooked  space 
which  is  left  between  the  legs  and  arms  and 
equipment  of  the  others.  He  draws  his  meagre 
trench-coat  over  his  body,  and  pulls  his  knees 
up  that  they,  too,  may  be  covered;  there  is 
nothing  over  his  feet,  and  already  they  are 
cold.  His  head  he  rests  on  a  rough  army  hav- 
ersack. In  the  middle  of  it  there  is  a  hard 
knob,  a  soap-tin,  or  a  book,  or  a  tin  of  beef. 
For  a  little  he  lies  uncomfortably  like  this,  hop- 
ing for  sleep ;  his  ear  is  crushed  on  the  hard  pil- 
low; there  is  something  knobbly  under  his 
hip.  He  knows  that  he  ought  to  get  up  and 
re-arrange  himself — but  he  lacks  the  neces- 
sary energy.  Finally  he  raises  himself  on  his 
elbow  and  tugs  at  the  towel  in  his  haversack 
to  make  him  a  pillow;  the  strap  of  the  haver- 
sack is  fastened,  and  the  towel  will  not  emerge. 
He  unfastens  the  haversack,  and  in  despera- 
tion pulls  out  the  whole  of  its  contents  with 
the  towel.  His  toothbrush  and  his  sponge  and 
his  diary  are  scattered  in  the  dust.  Some  of 
the  pages  of  the  diary  are  loose,  and  if  he 
leaves  it  they  will  be  lost;  he  feels  in  the  dark- 
[70] 


The  Secret  Battle 

ness  for  his  electric  torch,  and  curses  because 
he  cannot  find  it.  He  has  lent  it  to  the 
damned  fool  who  relieved  him.  Why  can't 
people  have  things  of  their  own? 

Painfully  groping  he  gathers  his  belongings 
and  puts  them,  one  by  one,  in  the  haversack, 
arranging  his  towel  on  the  top.  His  elbow 
is  sore  with  leaning  on  it,  but  the  pillow  is 
ready.  Lying  down  again  he  falls  quickly  to 
sleep.  Almost  at  once  there  is  a  wild  din  in 
his  dreams.  Rapid  fire  again.  Springing 
up,  he  rushes  into  the  trench  with  the  others. 
It  is  an  attack.  Who  is  attacking?  The  men 
in  the  trench  know  nothing.  It  started  on  the 
right,  they  say,  and  now  the  whole  line  is 
ablaze  again  with  this  maddening  rifle-fire. 
Running  back  to  the  dug-out  he  gropes  in  the 
wreckage  of  coats  and  equipment  for  his  belt 
and  revolver.  He  must  hurry  to  the  front  line 
to  take  charge  of  his  platoon.  There  are  no 
telephones  to  the  firing-line.  What  the  hell 
is  happening?  When  he  is  halfway  up  the 
communication  trench,  cannoning  into  the 
walls  in  his  haste  and  weariness,  the  firing  sud- 

[70 


The  Secret  Battle 

denly  stops.  It  was  a  wild  panic  started  by 
the  Senegalese  holding  the  line  on  our  right. 
Damn  them — black  idiots  1 

He  goes  back  swearing  with  the  other  offi- 
cers, and  they  lie  down  anyhow;  it  is  too  late 
now  to  waste  time  on  fussy  arrangements. 
When  he  wakes  up  again  there  is  already  a 
hint  of  light  in  the  East.  It  is  the  "Stand  to 
Arms"  before  dawn.  His  feet  are  numb  and 
painful  with  cold,  his  limbs  are  cramped  and 
aching,  and  his  right  forearm  has  gone  to 
sleep.  The  flesh  of  his  legs  is  clammy,  and 
sticks  to  the  breeches  he  has  lived  and  slept  in 
for  five  days:  he  longs  for  a  bath.  Slowly 
with  the  others  he  raises  himself  and  gropes 
weakly  in  the  muddle  of  garments  on  the  floor 
for  his  equipment.  He  cannot  find  his  re- 
volver. Burnett  has  lost  his  belt,  and  mut- 
ters angrily  to  himself.  All  their  belongings 
are  entangled  together  in  the  narrow  space; 
they  disengage  them  without  speaking  to  each 
other.  Each  one  is  in  a  dull  coma  of  endur- 
ance; for  the  moment  their  spirit  is  at  its  low- 
est ebb;  it  is  the  most  awful  moment  of  war- 
fare. In  a  little  they  will  revive,  but  just  now 


The  Secret  Battle 

they  cannot  pretend  to  bravery  or  cheerful- 
ness, only  curse  feebly  and  fumble  in  the  dark- 
ness. 

They  go  out  into  the  trench  and  join  their 
platoons.  The  N.  C.  O.'s  are  still  shaking  and 
bullying  the  men  still  asleep;  some  of  these 
are  almost  senseless,  and  can  only  be  roused 
'  by  prolonged  physical  violence.  The  officer 
braces  himself  for  his  duties,  and  by  and  by 
all  the  men  are  more  or  less  awake  and 
equipped,  though  their  heads  droop  as  they 
sit,  and  their  neighbours  nudge  them  into 
wakefulness  as  the  officer  approaches.  Me- 
chanically he  fills  and  lights  a  pipe,  and  takes  a 
cautious  sip  at  his  water-bottle;  the  pipe  turns 
his  empty  stomach,  and  an  intolerable  empti- 
ness assails  him.  He  knocks  out  the  pipe  and 
peers  over  the  parapet.  It  is  almost  light  now, 
but  a  thin  mist  hides  the  Turkish  trench.  His 
face  is  greasy  and  taut  with  dirt,  and  the  cor- 
ners of  his  eyes  are  full  of  dust;  his  throat  is 
dry,  and  there  is  a  loathsome  stubble  on  his 
chin,  which  he  fingers  absently,  pulling  at  the 
long  hairs. 

Steadily  the  light  grows  and  grows,  and  the 

[73] 


The  Secret  Battle 

men  begin  to  chatter,  and  suddenly  the  sun 
emerges  over  the  corner  of  Achi  Baba,  and 
life  and  warmth  come  back  to  the  numb  souls 
of  all  these  men.  "Stand  to"  is  over;  but  as 
the  men  tear  off  their  hateful  equipment  and 
lean  their  rifles  against  the  wall  of  the  trench 
there  is  a  sudden  burst  of  shelling  on  the  right. 
Figures  appear  running  on  the  sky-line. 
They  are  against  the  light,  and  the  shapes  are 
dark,  but  there  seems  to  be  a  dirty  blue  in 
their  uniforms.  No  one  quite  knows  how  the 
line  runs  up  there;  it  is  a  salient.  The  figures 
must  be  Turks  attacking  the  French.  The 
men  gape  over  the  parapet.  The  officer  gapes. 
It  is  nothing  to  do  with  them.  Then  he  re- 
members what  he  is  for,  and  tells  his  men  ex- 
citedly to  fire  on  the  figures.  Some  of  the 
men  have  begun  cooking  their  breakfast,  and 
are  with  difficulty  seduced  from  their  task. 
A  spasmodic  fire  opens  on  the  running  figures. 
It  is  hard  to  say  where  they  are  running,  or 
what  they  are  doing.  The  officer  is  puzzled. 
It  is  his  first  glimpse  of  battle,  and  he  feels 
that  a  battle  should  be  simple  and  easy  to  un- 
derstand. The  officer  of  the  next  platoon 

[74] 


The  Secret  Battle 

comes  along.  He  is  equally  ignorant  of  af- 
fairs, but  he  thinks  the  figures  are  French,  at- 
tacking the  Turks.  They,  too,  wear  blue. 
The  first  officer  rushes  down  the  line  telling 
the  men  to  "cease  fire."  The  men  growl  and 
go  back  to  their  cooking.  It  is  fairly  certain 
that  none  of  them  hit  any  of  the  distant  figures, 
but  the  officer  is  worried.  Why  was  nobody 
told  what  was  to  happen?  What  is  it  all 
about?  He  has  been  put  in  a  false  position. 
Presently  a  belated  chit  arrives  to  say  that  the 
French  were  to  attack  at  sunrise,  but  the  at- 
tack was  a  fiasco,  and  is  postponed. 

And  now  all  the  air  is  sickly  with  the  smell 
of  cooking,  and  the  dry  wood  crackles  in  every 
corner;  little  wisps  of  smoke  go  straight  up  in 
the  still  air.  All  the  Peninsula  is  beautiful 
in  the  sunlight,  and  wonderful  to  look  upon 
against  the  dark  blue  of  the  sea;  the  dew 
sparkles  on  the  scrub;  over  the  cypress  grove 
comes  the  first  aeroplane,  humming  content- 
edly. Another  day  has  begun ;  the  officer  goes 
down  whistling  to  wash  in  a  bucket. 


[75] 


IV 


SUCH  was  life  in  the  line  at  that  time. 
But  I  should  make  the  soldier's  almost 
automatic  reservation,  that  it  might 
have  been  worse.  There  might  have  been 
heavy  shelling;  but  the  shelling  on  the  trenches 
was  negligible — then;  there  might  have  been 
mud,  but  there  was  not.  And  eight  such  days 
might  have  left  Harry  Penrose  quite  unaf- 
fected in  spirit,  in  spite  of  his  physical  handi- 
caps, by  reason  of  his  extraordinary  vitality 
and  zest.  But  there  were  two  incidents  be- 
fore we  went  down  which  did  affect  him,  and 
it  is  necessary  that  they  should  be  told. 

On  the  fifth  day  in  the  line  he  did  a  very 
brave  thing — brave,  at  least,  in  the  popular 
sense,  which  means  that  many  another  man 
would  not  have  done  that  thing.  To  my  mind, 
a  man  is  brave  only  in  proportion  to  his  knowl- 
edge and  his  susceptibility  to  fear;  the  stand- 
ard of  the  mob,  the  standard  of  the  official 

[76] 


The  Secret  Battle 

military  mind,  is  absolute;  there  are  no  fine 
shades — no  account  of  circumstance  and  tem- 
perament is  allowed — and  perhaps  this  is  in- 
evitable. Most  men  would  say  that  Harry's 
deed  was  a  brave  one.  I  have  said  so  myself 
— but  I  am  not  sure. 

Eighty  to  a  hundred  yards  from  one  section 
of  our  line  was  a  small  stretch  of  Turkish 
trench,  considerably  in  advance  of  their  main 
line.  From  this  trench  a  particularly  harass- 
ing fire  was  kept  up,  night  and  day,  and  the 
Brigade  Staff  considered  that  it  should  be  cap- 
tured. High  officers  in  shirt  sleeves  and  red 
hats  looked  long  and  wisely  at  it  through  peri- 
scopes; colonels  and  adjutants  and  subalterns 
and  sergeants  stood  silent  and  respectful  while 
the  great  men  pondered.  The  great  men  then 
turned  round  with  the  air  of  those  who  make 
profound  decisions,  and  announced  that  "You 
ought  to  be  able  to  'enfilade'  it  from  'over 
there/  "  or  "I  suppose  they  'enfilade'  you  from 
there."  The  term  "enfilade"  invariably  oc- 
curred somewhere  in  these  dicta,  and  in  the 
listeners'  minds  there  stirred  the  suspicion  that 
the  Great  Ones  had  not  been  looking  at  the 

[77] 


The  Secret  Battle 

right  trench;  if  indeed  they  had  focused  the 
unfamiliar  instrument  so  as  to  see  anything 
at  all.  But  the  decision  was  made;  and  for 
the  purposes  of  a  night  attack  it  was  important 
to  know  whether  the  trench  was  held  strongly 
at  night,  or  occupied  only  by  a  few  busy 
snipers.  Harry  was  ordered  to  reconnoitre 
the  trench  with  two  scouts. 

The  night  was  pitch  black,  with  an  unusual 
absence  of  stars.  The  worst  of  the  rapid  fire 
was  over,  but  there  was  a  steady  spit  and 
crackle  of  bullets  from  the  Turks,  and  espe- 
cially from  the  little  trench  opposite.  Long 
afterwards,  in  France,  he  told  me  that  he 
would  never  again  dream  of  going  out  on  pa- 
trol in  the  face  of  such  a  fire.  But  tonight  it 
did  not  occur  to  him  to  delay  his  expedition. 
The  profession  of  scouting  made  a  special  ap- 
peal to  the  romantic  side  of  him;  the  prospect 
of  some  real,  practical  scouting  was  exciting. 
According  to  the  books  much  scouting  was 
done  under  heavy  fire,  but  according  to  the 
books,  and  in  the  absence  of  any  experience  to 
the  contrary,  it  was  probable  that  the  careful 
scout  would  not  be  killed.  Then  why  waste 

[78] 


The  Secret  Battle 

time?  (All  this  I  gathered  indirectly  from 
his  account  of  the  affair.)  Two  bullets 
smacked  into  the  parapet  by  his  head  as  he 
climbed  out  of  the  dark  sap  and  wriggled  for- 
ward into  the  scrub;  but  even  these  did  not 
give  him  pause.  Only  while  he  lay  and 
waited  for  the  two  men  to  follow  did  he  begin 
to  realize  how  many  bullets  were  flying  about. 
The  fire  was  now  really  heavy,  and  when  I 
heard  that  Harry  had  gone  out,  I  was  afraid. 
But  he  as  yet  was  only  faintly  surprised.  The 
Colonel  had  sent  him  out;  the  Colonel  had 
said  the  Turks  fired  high,  and  if  you  kept  low 
you  were  quite  safe — and  he  ought  to  know. 
This  was  a  regular  thing  in  warfare,  and  must 
be  done.  So  on  like  reptiles  into  the  dark- 
ness, dragging  with  hands  and  pushing  with 
knees.  Progress  in  the  orthodox  scout  fash- 
ion was  surprisingly  slow  and  exhausting. 
The  scrub  tickled  and  scratched  your  face, 
the  revolver  in  your  hands  caught  in  the  roots ; 
the  barrel  must  be  choked  with  dust.  More- 
over, it  was  impossible  to  see  anything  at  all, 
and  the  object  of  a  reconnaissance  being  to  see 
something,  this  was  perplexing.  Even  when 

[79] 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  frequent  flares  went  up  and  one  lay  pressed 
to  the  earth,  one's  horizon  was  the  edge  of  a 
tuft  of  scrub  five  yards  away.  This  always 
looked  like  the  summit  of  some  commanding 
height;  but  labouring  thither  one  saw  by  the 
next  flare  only  another  exactly  similar  horizon 
beyond.  So  must  the  worm  feel,  wandering 
in  the  rugged  spaces  of  a  well-kept  lawn.  It 
was  long  before  Harry  properly  understood 
this  phenomenon;  and  by  then  his  neck  was 
stiff  and  aching  from  lying  flat  and  cranning 
his  head  back  to  see  in  front.  But  after  many 
hours  of  crawling  the  ground  sloped  down  a 
little,  and  now  they  could  see  the  sharp,  stab- 
bing flashes  from  the  rifles  of  the  snipers  in 
the  little  trench  ahead  of  them.  Clearly  they 
were  only  snipers,  for  the  flashes  came  from 
only  eight  or  nine  particular  spots,  spaced  out 
at  intervals.  Now  the  scouts  glowed  with 
the  sense  of  achievement  as  they  watched. 
They  had  found  out.  Never  again  could 
Harry  have  lain  like  that,  naked  in  the  face 
of  those  near  rifles,  coldly  calculating  and 
watching,  without  an  effort  of  real  heroism. 
On  this  night  he  did  it  easily — confident,  un- 

[80] 


The  Secret  Battle 

afraid.  Elated  with  his  little  success,  some- 
thing prompted  him  to  go  farther  and  confirm 
his  deductions.  He  whispered  to  his  men  to 
lie  down  in  a  fold  of  the  ground,  and  crept 
forward  to  the  very  trench  itself,  aiming  at  a 
point  midway  between  two  flashes.  There 
was  no  wire  in  front  of  the  trench,  but  as  he 
saw  the  parapet  looming  like  a  mountain  close 
ahead,  he  began  to  realize  what  a  mad  fool 
he  was,  alone  and  helpless  within  a  yard  of 
the  Turks,  an  easy  mark  in  the  light  of  the  next 
flare.  But  he  would  not  go  back,  and  squirm- 
ing on  worked  his  head  into  a  gap  in  the  para- 
pet, and  gazed  into  a  vast  blackness.  This  he 
did  with  a  wild  incautiousness,  the  patience  of 
the  true  scout  overcome  by  his  anxiety  to  do 
what  he  intended  as  soon  as  possible.  The 
Turks7  own  rifles  had  drowned  the  noise  of 
his  movements,  and  providentially  no  flare 
went  up  till  his  body  was  against  the  parapet. 
When  at  length  the  faint  wavering  light  be- 
gan and  swelled  into  sudden  brilliance,  he 
could  see  right  into  the  trench,  and  when  the 
shadows  chased  each  other  back  into  its  depths 
as  the  light  fell,  he  lay  marvelling  at  his  own 

[81] 


The  Secret  Battle 

audacity:  so  impressed  was  he  by  the  wonder 
of  his  exploit  that  he  was  incapable  of  making 
any  intelligent  observations,  other  than  the 
bald  fact  that  there  were  no  men  in  that  part 
of  the  trench.  He  was  still  waiting  for  an- 
other flare  when  there  was  a  burst  of  rapid  fire 
from  our  own  line  a  little  to  the  right.  Sud- 
denly he  realized  that  B  Company  did  not 
know  he  <was  out;  C  Company  knew,  but  in  his 
haste  he  had  forgotten  to  see  that  the  others 
were  informed  before  he  left,  as  he  had  ar- 
ranged to  do  with  the  Colonel.  He  and  his 
scouts  would  be  shot  by  B  Company.  Ob- 
sessed with  this  thought  he  turned  and  scram- 
bled breathlessly  back  to  the  two  waiting  men. 
God  knows  why  he  wasn't  seen  and  sniped; 
and  his  retirement  must  have  been  very  noisy, 
for  as  he  reached  the  others  all  the  snipers  in 
the  trench  opened  fire  feverishly  together. 
Harry  and  his  men,  who  were  cold  with  wait- 
ing, wriggled  blindly  back ;  they  no  longer  pre- 
tended to  any  deliberation  or  cunning,  but  hav- 
ing come  to  no  harm  so  far  were  not  seriously 
anxious  about  themselves;  only  it  seemed  good 
to  go  back  now.  But  after  a  few  yards  one  of 

[82] 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  men,  Trower,  gave  a  scream  of  agony  and 
cried  out,  "I'm  hit,  I'm  hit." 

In  that  moment,  Harry  told  me,  all  the  ela- 
tion and  pride  of  his  exploit  ebbed  out  of  him. 
A  sick  disgust  with  himself  and  everything 
came  over  him.  Williams,  the  other  scout, 
lay  between  him  and  Trower,  who  was  now 
moaning  horribly  in  the  darkness.  For  a  mo- 
ment Harry  was  paralysed;  he  lay  there,  say- 
ing feebly,  "Where  are  you  hit?  Where  is  he 
hit,  Williams?  Where  are  you  hit?"  When 
at  last  he  got  to  his  side,  the  man  was  almost 
unconscious  with  pain,  but  he  had  managed 
to  screech  out  "Both  legs."  In  fact,  he  had 
been  shot  through  the  femoral  artery,  and  one 
leg  was  broken.  In  that  blackness  skilled 
hands  would  have  had  difficulty  in  bandaging 
any  wound;  Harry  and  Williams  could  not 
even  tell  where  his  wound  was,  for  all  his  legs 
were  wet  and  sticky  with  blood.  But  both  of 
them  were  fumbling  and  scratching  at  their 
field-dressings  for  some  moments  before  they 
realized  this.  Then  they  started  to  take  the 
man  in,  half  dragging,  half  carrying  him.  At 
every  movement  the  man  shrieked  in  agony. 

[83] 


The  Secret  Battle 

When  they  stood  up  to  carry  him  bodily,  he 
screamed  so  piercingly  that  the  storm  of  bul- 
lets was  immediately  doubled  about  them. 
When  they  lay  down  and  dragged  him  he 
screamed  less,  but  progress  was  impossibly 
slow.  And  now  it  seemed  that  there  were 
Turks  in  the  open  scrub  about  them,  for  there 
were  flashes  and  loud  reports  at  strangely  close 
quarters.  The  Turks  could  not  see  the  miser- 
able little  party,  but  Trower's  screams  were 
an  easy  guide.  Then  Harry  bethought  him 
of  the  little  medical  case  in  his  breast-pocket 
where,  with  needles  and  aspirin  and  plaster 
and  pills,  was  a  small  phial  of  morphine  tab- 
lets. For  Trower's  sake  and  their  own,  his 
screaming  must  be  stilled.  Tearing  open  his 
pocket  he  fumbled  at  the  elastic  band  round 
the  case.  The  little  phial  was  smaller  than 
the  rest;  he  knew  where  it  lay.  But  the  case 
was  upside-down;  all  the  phials  seemed  the 
same  size.  Trembling,  he  pulled  out  the 
cork  and  shook  out  one  of  the  tablets  into  his 
hand;  a  bullet  cracked  like  a  whip  over  his 
head;  the  tablet  fell  in  the  scrub.  He  got  an- 
other out  and  passed  it  over  to  Williams. 

[84] 


The  Secret  Battle 

Williams's  hand  was  shaking,  and  he  dropped 
it.  Harry  groaned.  The  next  two  were 
safely  transferred  and  pressed  into  Trower's 
mouth :  he  did  not  know  how  strong  they  were, 
but  he  remembered  vaguely  seeing  "One  or 
two"  on  the  label,  and  at  that  black  moment 
the  phrase  came  curiously  into  his  head,  "As 
ordered  by  the  doctor."  Trower  was  quieter 
now,  and  this  made  the  other  two  a  little 
calmer.  Harry  told  me  he  was  now  so  cool  that 
he  could  put  the  phial  back  carefully  in  the 
case  and  return  them  to  his  pocket;  even,  from 
sheer  force  of  habit,  he  buttoned  up  the  pocket. 
But  when  they  moved  off  they  realized  with  a 
new  horror  that  they  were  lost.  They  had 
come  out  originally  from  the  head  of  a  long 
sap;  in  the  darkness  and  the  excitement  they 
had  lost  all  sense  of  direction,  and  had  missed 
the  sap.  Probably  they  were  not  more  than 
fifty  yards  from  friends,  but  they  might  be 
moving  parallel  to  the  sap  or  parallel  to  the 
front  line,  and  that  way  they  might  go  on 
indefinitely.  They  could  not  drag  their 
wretched  burden  with  them  indefinitely;  so 
Harry  sent  Williams  to  find  the  trench,  and 

[85] 


The  Secret  Battle 

lay  throbbing  by  the  wounded  man.  No  one 
who  has  not  been  lost  in  the  pitchy  dark  in  No 
Man's  Land  can  understand  how  easy  it  is  to 
arrive  at  that  condition,  and  the  intense  feeling 
of  helplessness  it  produces.  That  solitary  wait 
of  Harry's  must  have  been  terrible;  for  he  had 
time  now  to  ponder  his  position.  Perhaps 
Williams  would  not  find  the  trench;  perhaps 
he,  too,  would  be  hit;  perhaps  he  would  not 
be  able  to  find  the  scouts  again.  What  should 
they  do  then?  Anything  was  possible  in  this 
awful  darkness,  with  these  bullets  cracking  and 
tearing  about  him.  Perhaps  he  would  be 
killed  himself.  Straining  his  ears  he  fancied 
he  could  hear  the  rustle  of  creeping  men,  any 
moment  he  expected  a  rending  blow  on  his 
own  tender  body.  But  his  revolver  had  been 
dropped  in  the  dragging  of  Trower.  He 
could  do  nothing — only  try  to  bind  up  the  poor 
legs  again.  Poor  Harry  1  as  he  lay  there  ban- 
daging his  scout,  he  noticed  that  the  lad  had 
stopped  moaning,  and  said  to  himself  that  his 
morphine  tablets  had  done  their  work.  That 
was  something,  anyhow.  But  the  man  was 
already  dead.  He  could  not  have  lived  for 
[86] 


The  Secret  Battle 

ten  minutes,  the  doctor  told  me.  And  when 
Williams  at  last  returned,  trailing  a  long 
string  from  the  sap,  it  was  a  dead  man  they 
brought  painfully  into  the  trench  and  handed 
over  gently  to  the  stretcher-bearers. 

I  was  in  the  sap  when  they  came,  and 
dragged  Harry  away  from  it.  And  when  they 
told  him  he  nearly  cried. 

II 

The  other  incident  is  briefly  told.  On  our 
last  day  in  the  line  Harry's  platoon  were  work- 
ing stealthily  in  the  hot  sun  at  a  new  section 
of  trench  connecting  two  saps,  and  some  one 
incautiously  threw  a  little  new-turned  earth 
over  the  parapet.  The  Turks,  who  seldom  mo- 
lested any  of  the  regular,  established  trenches 
with  shell-fire,  but  hotly  resented  the  making 
of  new  ones,  opened  fire  with  a  light  high- 
velocity  gun,  of  the  whizz-bang  type.  This 
was  our  first  experience  of  the  weapon,  and 
the  first  experience  of  a  whizz-bang  is  very  dis- 
turbing. The  long  shriek  of  the  ordinary 
shell  encourages  the  usually  futile  hope  that  by 
ducking  one  may  avoid  destruction.  With  the 

[87] 


The  Secret  Battle 

whizz-bang  there  is  no  hope,  for  there  is  no 
warning;  the  sound  and  the  shell  arrive  almost 
simultaneausly.  Harry's  platoon  did  not  like 
these  things.  The  first  three  burst  near  but 
short  of  the  trench,  filling  the  air  with  fumes ; 
the  fourth  hit  and  removed  most  of  the  parapet 
of  one  bay.  Harry,  hurrying  along  to  the 
place,  found  the  four  men  there  considerably 
surprised,  crouching  in  the  corners  and  gazing 
stupidly  at  the  yawning  gap.  It  was  unde- 
sirable, if  not  impossible,  to  rebuild  the  para- 
pet during  daylight,  so  he  moved  them  into  the 
next  bay.  He  then  went  along  the  trench  to 
see  that  all  the  men  had  ceased  work.  He 
heard  two  more  shells  burst  behind  him  as  he 
went.  On  his  way  back  two  men  rushing 
round  a  corner — two  men  with  white  faces 
smeared  with  black  and  a  little  blood — almost 
knocked  him  down ;  they  were  speechless.  He 
went  through  the  bay  which  had  been  blown 
in;  it  was  silent,  empty;  the  bay  beyond  was 
silent  too,  save  for  the  buzzing  of  a  thousand 
flies.  In  it  he  had  left  eight  men ;  six  of  them 
were  lying  dead.  Two  had  marvellously  es- 
caped. The  first  whizz-bang  had  blown  away 
[88] 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  parapet;  the  second,  following  immedi- 
ately after,  had  passed  miraculously  through 
the  hole,  straight  into  the  trench — a  piece  of 
astounding  bad  luck  or  good  gunnery.  The 
men  could  not  be  buried  till  dusk,  and  we  left 
them  there. 

Two  hours  later,  as  we  sat  under  a  water- 
proof sheet  and  talked  quietly  of  this  thing, 
there  came  an  engineer  officer  wandering  along 
the  trench.  He  had  come,  crouching,  through 
those  two  shattered  and  yawning  bays:  he  was 
hot  and  very  angry.  '  Why  the  hell  don't  you 
bury  those  Turks?"  he  said,  "they  must  have 
been  there  for  weeks!"  This  is  the  kind  of 
charge  which  infuriates  the  soldier  at  any 
time;  and  we  did  not  like  the  added  suggestion 
that  those  six  good  men  of  the  i4th  Platoon 
were  dead  Turks.  We  told  him  they  were 
Englishmen,  dead  two  hours.  "But,  my  God, 
man,"  he  said,  "they're  black!"  We  led  him 
back,  incredulous,  to  the  place. 

When  we  got  there  we  understood. 
Whether  from  the  explosion  or  the  scorching 
sun  in  that  airless  place,  I  know  now,  but  those 
six  men  were,  as  he  said,  literally  black — black 

[89] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  reeking  and  hideous — and  the  flies  .  .  .! 
Harry  and  I  crouched  at  the  end  of  that 
bay,  truly  unable  to  believe  our  eyes.  I  hope 
I  may  never  again  see  such  horror  as  was  in 
Harry's  face.  They  were  his  platoon,  and 
he  knew  them,  as  an  officer  should.  After  the 
explosion,  there  had  been  only  four  whom  he 
could  definitely  identify.  Now  there  was  not 
one.  In  two  hours  .  .  . 

I  do  not  wish  to  labour  this  or  any  similar 
episode.  I  have  seen  many  worse  things; 
every  soldier  has.  In  a  man's  history  they 
are  important  only  in  their  effect  upon  him, 
and  the  effect  they  have  is  determined  by  many 
things — by  his  experience,  and  his  health,  and 
his  state  of  mind.  But  if  you  are  to  under- 
stand what  I  may  call  the  battle-psychology  of 
a  man,  as  I  want  you  to  understand  Harry's, 
you  must  not  ignore  particular  incidents.  For 
in  this  respect  the  lives  of  soldiers  are  not  uni- 
form ;  though  many  may  live  in  the  same  regi- 
ment and  fight  in  the1  same  battles,  the  experi- 
ences which  matter  come  to  them  diversely — 
to  some  crowded  and  overwhelming,  to  some 

[90] 


The  Secret  Battle 

by  kind  and  delicate  degrees.  And  so  do  their 
spirits  develop. 

These  two  incidents  following  so  closely 
upon  each  other  had  a  most  unhappy  cumu- 
lative effect  on  Harry.  His  night's  scouting, 
in  spite  of  its  miserable  end,  had  not  percep- 
tibly dimmed  his  romantic  outlook;  it  had 
been  an  adventure,  and  from  a  military  point 
of  view  a  successful  adventure.  The  Colonel 
had  been  pleased  with  the  reconnaissance,  as 
such.  But  the  sight  of  his  six  poor  men,  lying 
black  and  beastly  in  that  sunlit  hole,  had  killed 
the  "Romance  of  War"  for  him.  Henceforth 
it  must  be  a  necessary  but  disgusting  business, 
to  be  endured  like  a  dung-hill.  But  this,  in  the 
end,  was  inevitable;  with  all  soldiers  it  is  only 
a  matter  of  time,  though  for  a  boy  of  Harry's 
temperament  it  was  an  ill  chance  that  it  should 
come  so  soon. 

What  was  more  serious  was  this.  The  two 
incidents  had  revived,  in  a  most  malignant 
form,  his  old  distrust  of  his  own  competence. 
I  found  that  he  was  brooding  over  this — ac- 
cusing himself,  quite  wrongly,  I  think,  of  be- 
ing responsible  for  the  death  of  seven  men. 


The  Secret  Battle 

He  had  bungled  the  scouting;  he  had  reck- 
lessly attracted  attention  to  the  party,  and 
Trower,  not  he,  had  paid  for  it.  He  had 
moved  four  men  into  a  bay  where  four  others 
already  were,  and  six  of  them  had  been  killed. 
I  tried  hard  to  persuade  him,  not  quite  hon- 
estly, that  he  had  done  absolutely  the  right 
thing.  In  scouting,  of  all  things,  I  told  him, 
a  man  must  take  chances;  and  the  matter  of 
the  two  whizz-bangs  was  sheer  bad  luck.  It 
was  no  good ;  he  was  a  fool — a  failure.  Un- 
consciously, the  Colonel  encouraged  this  atti- 
tude. For,  thinking  that  Harry's  nerve  might 
well  have  been  shaken  by  his  first  experience, 
he  would  not  let  him  go  out  on  patrol  again 
on  our  next  "tour"  in  the  line.  I  think  he  was 
quite  mistaken  in  this  view,  for  the  boy  did  not 
even  seem  to  realize  how  narrow  his  own  es- 
capes had  been,  so  concerned  was  he  about  his 
lost  men.  Nor  did  this  explanation  of  the 
Colonel's  veto  even  occur  to  him.  Rather  it 
affirmed  him  in  his  distrust  of  himself,  for  it 
seemed  to  him  that  the  Colonel,  too,  must  look 
upon  him  as  a  bungler,  a  waster  of  men's 
lives.  .  .  . 

[92] 


The  Secret  Battle 

All  this  was  very  bad,  and  I  was  much 
afraid  of  what  the  reaction  might  be.  But 
there  was  one  bright  spot.  So  far  he  only 
distrusted  his  military  capacity;  there  was  no 
sign  of  his  distrusting  his  own  courage.  I 
prayed  that  that  might  not  follow. 


[931 


MID-JUNE  came  with  all  its  plagues 
and  fevers  and  irritable  distresses. 
Life  in  the  rest-camp  became  daily 
more  intolerable.  There  set  in  a  steady  wind 
from  the  north-east  which  blew  all  day  down 
the  flayed  rest-areas  of  the  Peninsula,  raising 
great  columns  of  blinding,  maddening  dust. 
It  was  a  hot,  parching  wind,  which  in  no  way 
mitigated  the  scorch  of  the  sun,  and  the  dust 
it  brought  became  a  definite  enemy  to  human 
peace.  It  pervaded  everything.  It  poured 
into  every  hole  and  dug-out,  and  filtered  into 
every  man's  belongings;  it  formed  a  gritty 
sediment  in  water  and  tea,  it  passed  into  a  man 
with  every  morsel  of  food  he  ate,  and  scraped 
and  tore  at  his  inside.  It  covered  his  pipe 
so  that  he  could  not  even  smoke  with  pleasure ; 
it  lay  in  a  thick  coating  on  his  face  so  that  he 
looked  like  a  wan  ghost,  paler  than  disease  had 
made  him.  It  made  the  cleaning  of  his  rifle 

[94] 


The  Secret  Battle 

a  too,  too  frequent  farce ;  it  worked  under  his 
breeches,  and  gathered  at  the  back  of  his  knees, 
chafing  and  torturing  him ;  and  if  he  lay  down 
to  sleep  in  his  hole  it  swept  in  billows  over  his 
face,  or  men  passing  clumsily  above  kicked 
great  showers  upon  him.  Sleep  was  not  pos- 
sible in  the  rest-camps  while  that  wind  blew. 
But  indeed  there  were  many  things  which 
made  rest  in  the  rest-camps  impossible.  Few 
more  terrible  plagues  can  have  afflicted  Brit- 
ish troops  than  the  flies  of  Gallipoli.  In  May, 
by  comparison,  there  were  none.  In  June  they 
became  unbearable;  in  July  they  were  liter- 
ally inconceivable.  Most  Englishmen  have 
lain  down  some  gentle  summer  day  to  doze  on  a 
shaded  lawn  and  found  that  one  or  two  per- 
sistent flies  have  destroyed  the  repose  of  the 
afternoon;  many  women  have  turned  sick  at 
the  sight  of  a  blowfly  in  their  butcher's  shop. 
Let  them  imagine  a  semi-tropical  sun  in  a 
place  where  there  is  little  or  no  shade,  where 
sanitary  arrangements  are  less  than  primitive, 
where,  in  spite  of  all  precautions,  there  are 
scraps  of  bacon  and  sugar  and  tea-leaves  lying 
everywhere  in  the  dust,  and  every  man  has  his 

[95] 


The  Secret  Battle 

little  daily  store  of  food  somewhere  near  him, 
where  there  are  dead  bodies  and  the  carcasses 
of  mules  easily  accessible  to  the  least  venture- 
some fly — let  them  read  for  "one"  fly  a  hun- 
dred, a  thousand,  a  million,  and  even  then  they 
will  not  exaggerate  the  horror  of  that  plague. 
Under  it  the  disadvantages  of  a  sensitive  na- 
ture and  a  delicate  upbringing  were  easy  to 
see.  An  officer  lies  down  in  the  afternoon  to 
sleep  in  his  hole.  The  flies  cluster  on  his  face. 
Patiently,  at  first,  he  brushes  them  away,  with 
a  drill-like  mechanical  movement  of  his  hand; 
by  and  by  he  does  it  angrily;  his  temper  is  go- 
ing. He  covers  his  face  with  a  handkerchief ; 
it  is  distressingly  hot,  but  at  least  he  may  have 
some  rest.  The  flies  settle  on  his  hand,  on  his 
neck,  on  the  bare  part  of  his  leg.  Even  there 
the  feel  of  them  is  becoming  a  genuine  tor- 
ment. They  creep  under  the  handkerchief; 
there  is  one  on  his  lip,  another  buzzing  about 
his  eye.  Madly  he  tears  off  the  handkerchief 
and  lashes  out,  waving  it  furiously  till  the  air 
is  free.  The  flies  gather  on  the  walls  of  the 
dug-out,  on  the  waterproof  sheet,  and  watch; 
they  are  waiting  motionless  till  he  lies  down 

[96] 


The  Secret  Battle 

again.  He  throws  his  coat  over  his  bare  knees 
and  lies  back.  The  torment  begins  again.  It 
is  unendurable.  He  gets  up,  cursing,  and 
goes  out;  better  to  walk  in  the  hot  sun  or  sit 
under  the  olive-tree  in  the  windy  dust. 

But  look  into  the  crowded  ditches  of  the 
men.  Some  of  them  are  fighting  the  same 
fight,  hands  moving  and  faces  twitching,  like 
the  flesh  of  horses,  automatically.  But  most 
of  them  lie  still,  not  asleep,  but  in  a  kind 
of  dogged  artificial  insensibility.  The  flies 
crowd  on  their  faces;  they  swarm  about  their 
eyes,  and  crawl  unmolested  about  their  open 
mouths.  It  is  a  horrible  sight,  but  those  men 
are  lucky. 

Then  there  was  always  a  great  noise  in  the 
camp,  for  men  would  be  called  for  from  Head- 
quarters at  the  end  of  it  or  orders  passed  down, 
and  so  great  was  the  wind  and  the  noise  of 
the  French  guns  and  the  Turkish  shells,  that 
these  messages  had  to  be  bawled  from  man  to 
man.  The  men  grew  lazy  from  sheer  weari- 
ness of  these  messages,  so  that  they  were  mu- 
tilated as  they  came  and  had  to  be  repeated; 
and  there  was  this  babel  always.  The  men, 

[97] 


The  Secret  Battle 

too,  like  the  officers,  became  irritable  with 
each  other,  and  wrangled  incessantly  over  lit- 
tle things ;  only  the  officers  argued  quietly  and 
bitterly,  and  the  men  shouted  oaths  at  each 
other  and  filthy  epithets.  There  was  only  a 
yard  between  the  holes  of  the  officers  and  the 
holes  of  the  men,  and  their  raucous  quarrelling 
grated  on  nerves  already  sensitive  from  the 
trials  of  the  day,  and  the  officer  came  near  to 
cursing  his  own  men ;  and  that  is  bad. 

So  there  was  no  rest  to  be  had  in  the  camp 
during  the  day;  and  at  night  we  marched  out 
in  long  columns  to  dig  in  the  whispering 
gullies,  or  unload  ships  on  the  beach.  There 
were  many  of  these  parties,  and  we  were  much 
overworked,  as  all  infantry  units  invariably 
are;  and  only  at  long  intervals  there  came  an 
evening  when  a  man  might  lie  down  under  the 
perfect  stars  and  sleep  all  night  undisturbed. 
Then  indeed  he  had  rest;  and  when  he  woke 
to  a  sudden  burst  of  shell-fire,  lay  quiet  in 
his  hole,  too  tired  and  dreamy  to  be  afraid. 

Dust  and  flies  and  the  food  and  the  water 
and  our  weakness  joined  forces  against  us, 
and  dysentery  raged  among  us.  There  were 

[98] 


The  Secret  Battle 

many  who  had  never  heard  of  the  disease,  and 
thought  vaguely  of  the  distemper  of  dogs. 
Those  who  had  heard  of  it  thought  of  it  as 
something  rather  romantically  Eastern,  like 
the  tsetse  fly,  and  the  first  cases  were  invested 
with  a  certain  mysterious  distinction — espe- 
cially as  most  of  them  were  sent  away.  But  it 
became  universal;  everybody  had  it,  and 
everybody  could  not  be  sent  away.  One  man 
in  a  thousand  went  through  that  time  un- 
touched; one  in  ten  escaped  with  a  slight  at- 
tack. But  the  remainder  lived  permanently 
or  intermittently  in  a  condition  which  in  any 
normal  campaign  would  have  long  since  sent 
them  on  stretchers  to  the  base.  The  men  could 
not  be  spared;  they  stayed  and  endured  and 
tottered  at  their  work.  Thus  there  was  every 
circumstance  to  encourage  infection  and  little 
to  resist  it.  One  by  one  the  officers  of  D  Com- 
pany were  stricken.  The  first  stages  were 
mildly  unpleasant,  encouraging  that  comfort- 
able sense  of  martyrdom  which  belongs  to  a 
recognized  but  endurable  complaint.  As  it 
grew  worse,  men  became  querulous  but  were 
still  interested  in  themselves,  and  those  not  in 

[99] 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  final  stages  discussed  their  symptoms,  emu- 
lously,  disgustingly — still  a  little  anxious  to  be 
worse  than  their  fellows. 

In  the  worst  stage  there  was  no  emulation, 
only  a  dull  misery  of  recurrent  pain  and  lassi- 
tude and  disgust.  A  man  could  not  touch  the 
coarse  food  which  was  all  we  had;  or,  if  from 
sheer  emptiness  he  did,  his  sufferings  were  im- 
mediately magnified.  Yet  always  he  had  a 
wild  craving  for  delicate  food,  and  as  he 
turned  from  the  sickening  bacon  in  the  gritty 
lid  of  his  mess-tin,  conjured  bright  visions  of 
lovely  dainties  which  might  satisfy  his  longing 
and  give  him  back  his  strength.  So  men 
prayed  for  parcels.  But  when  they  came,  or 
when  some  wanderer  came  back  from  the 
Islands  with  a  basket  of  Grecian  eggs,  too 
often  it  was  too  late  for  the  sickest  men,  and 
their  agonies  were  only  increased.  Scientific 
dieting  was  impossible.  They  could  only 
struggle  on,  for  ever  sick,  yet  for  ever  on  duty: 
this  was  the  awful  thing.  When  a  man 
reached  this  stage,  the  army  was  lucky  indeed 
if  it  did  not  lose  him;  he  was  lucky  himself  if 
he  did  not  die.  But  so  strong  is  the  human 

[100] 


The  Secret  Battle 

spirit  and  so  patient  the  human  body,  that  most 
won  through  this  phase  to  a  spasmodic  exist- 
ence of  alternate  sickness  and  precarious 
health;  and  when  they  said  to  themselves  "I 
am  well,"  and  ate  heartily,  and  said  to  their 
companions  "This  and  that  is  what  you  should 
do,"  the  disease  gripped  them  again,  each  time 
more  violently.  All  this  sapped  the  strength 
of  a  man;  and  finally  there  came  a  terrible 
debility,  a  kind  of  paralysing  lassitude  when 
it  needed  a  genuine  flogging  of  the  will  for 
him  to  lift  himself  and  walk  across  the  camp, 
and  his  knees  seemed  permanently  feeble,  as  if 
a  fever  had  just  left  him.  Yet  many  endured 
this  condition  for  weeks  and  months  till  the 
fever  definitely  took  them.  Some  became 
so  weak  that  while  they  still  tottered  up  to  the 
line  and  about  their  duties,  they  could  not 
gratuitously  drag  themselves  to  the  beach  to 
bathe.  Then  indeed  were  they  far  gone,  for 
the  evening  swims  were  the  few  paradisial  mo- 
ments of  that  time.  When  the  sun  had  but  an 
hour  to  live,  and  the  wind  and  the  dust  and 
the  flies  were  already  dwindling,  we  climbed 
down  a  cliff-path  where  the  Indians  kept  their 

[101] 


The  Secret  Battle 

sacred  but  odorous  goats.  There  was  a  fringe 
of  rocks  under  the  cliffs  where  we  could  dive. 
There  we  undressed,  hot  and  grimy,  lousy, 
thirsty,  and  tired.  Along  the  rocks  solitary 
Indians  were  kneeling  towards  Mecca.  Some 
of  the  old  battered  boats  of  the  first  landing 
were  still  nosing  the  shore,  and  at  a  safe  dis- 
tance was  a  dead  mule.  The  troops  did  not 
come  here  but  waded  noisily  in  the  shallow 
water;  so  all  was  quiet,  save  for  an  occasional 
lazy  shell  from  Asia  and  the  chunk-chunk  of 
a  patrol-boat.  The  sea  at  this  hour  put  on  its 
most  perfect  blue,  and  the  foot-hills  across  the 
Straits  were  all  warm  and  twinkling  in  the  late 
sun.  So  we  sat  and  drank  in  the  strengthen- 
ing breeze,  and  felt  the  clean  air  on  our  con- 
taminated flesh ;  and  plunging  luxuriously  into 
the  lovely  water  forgot  for  a  magical  moment 
all  our  weariness  and  disgust. 

When  a  man  could  not  do  this,  he  was  ill 
indeed. 

II 

And  by  this  time  we  had  found  each  other 
out.     We  had  discovered  a  true  standard  of 

[102] 


The  Secret  Battle 

right  and  wrong;  we  knew  quite  clearly  now, 
some  of  us  for  the  first  time,  what  sort  of  ac- 
tion was  "dirty,"  and  we  were  fairly  clear 
how  likely  each  of  us  was  to  do  such  an  action. 
We  knew  all  our  little  weaknesses  and  most 
of  our  serious  flaws;  under  that  olive-tree  they 
could  not  long  be  hid.  In  the  pleasant  life 
of  London  or  Oxford  we  had  had  no  occasion 
to  do  anything  dishonourable  or  underhand; 
in  our  relations  with  other  men  we  had  not 
even  wished  to  be  guilty  of  anything  worse 
than  mild  unkindnesses  or  consistent  unpunc- 
tuality.  But  behind  the  footlights  of  Gallip- 
oli  we  had  found  real  burning  temptations; 
and  we  had  found  our  characters.  D  Com- 
pany on  the  whole  was  lucky,  and  had  stood 
the  test  well.  We  knew  that  Burnett  was 
"bogus";  but  we  knew  that  Williams  of  A 
Company  was  incalculably  more  "bogus" ;  we 
had  stood  in  the  dark  sap  at  night  and  re- 
luctantly overheard  the  men  of  his  company 
speak  of  him  and  his  officers. 

But  little  weaknesses  beget  great  irritations 
in  that  life,  and  the  intimate  problems  of  com- 
munal feeding  were  enough  to  search  out  all 

[103] 


The  Secret  Battle 

our  weaknesses.  We  knew  that  some  of  us, 
though  courageous,  were  greedy;  that  others, 
though  not  greedy,  were  querulous  about  their 
food  and  had  a  nasty  habit  of  "sticking  out  for 
their  rights" :  indeed,  I  think  I  developed  this 
habit  myself.  We  had  had  trouble  about  par- 
cels. Parcels  in  theory  were  thrown  into  the 
common  stock  of  the  mess:  but  Egerton  and 
Burnett  never  had  parcels,  and  were  by  no 
means  the  most  delicate  eaters  of  other  people's 
dainties.  Harry  and  Hewett  reserved  some 
portion  of  each  parcel,  a  cake  or  a  slab  of 
chocolate,  which  they  ate  furtively  in  their 
dug-outs,  or  shared  with  each  other  in  the 
dusk;  Burnett  ostentatiously  endowed  the  mess 
with  his  entire  stock,  but  afterwards  at  every 
meal  hinted  sombrely  at  the  rapacity  of  those 
who  had  devoured  it.  Harry  and  Hewett 
each  made  contributions  to  the  mess;  but 
Harry  objected  to  the  excessive  consumption 
of  this  food  by  Burnett,  and  Hewett,  who  gave 
ungrudgingly  to  the  rest  of  us,  had  a  similar 
reservation — never  expressed — as  against  Eg- 
erton. So  all  this  matter  of  food  set  in  mo- 
tion a  number  of  antagonisms  seldom  or  never 
[104] 


The  Secret  Battle 

articulate,  but  painfully  perceptible  at  every 
meal. 

The  parcel  question,  I  think,  was  one  of  the 
things  which  embittered  the  quarrel  between 
Harry  and  Burnett.  A  parcel  from  home  to 
schoolboys  and  soldiers  and  prisoners  and 
sailors,  and  all  homesick  exiles,  is  the  most 
powerful  emblem  of  sentiment  and  affection. 
A  man  would  willingly  preserve  its  treasures 
for  himself  to  gloat  over  alone,  in  no  mere 
fleshly  indulgence,  but  as  a  concrete  expres- 
sion of  affection  from  the  home  for  which  he 
longs.  This  is  not  nonsense.  He  likes  to 
undo  the  strings  in  the  grubby  hole  which  is 
his  present  home,  and  secretly  become  senti- 
mental over  the  little  fond  packages  and  queer, 
loving  thoughts  which  have  composed  it. 
And  though  in  a  generous  impulse  he  may 
say  to  his  companions,  "Come,  and  eat  this 
cake,"  and  see  it  in  a  moment  disappear,  it  is 
hard  for  him  not  to  think,  "My  sister  (or  wife, 
or  mother)  made  this  for  me;  they  thought 
it  would  give  me  pleasure  for  many  days. 
Already  it  is  gone — would  they  not  be  hurt  if 
they  knew?"  He  feels  that  he  has  betrayed 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  tenderness  of  his  home;  and  though  the 
giving  of  pleasure  to  companions  he  likes  may 
overcome  this  feeling,  the  compulsory  squan- 
dering of  such  precious  pleasure  on  a  man  he 
despises  calls  up  the  worst  bitterness  of  his 
heart.  So  was  it  between  Harry  and  Burnett. 

If,  by  the  way,  it  be  suggested  that  Burnett 
was  entitled  to  feel  the  same  sentimental  jeal- 
ousy about  his  parcels,  I  answer  that  Burnett's 
parcels  came  on  his  own  order  from  the  soul- 
less hand  of  Fortnum  and  Mason. 

All  of  us  were  very  touchy,  very  raw  and 
irritable  in  that  fevered  atmosphere.  Men 
who  were  always  late  in  relieving  another  on 
watch,  or  unreasonably  resented  a  minute's 
postponement  of  their  relief,  or  never  had  any 
article  of  their  own  but  for  ever  borrowed 
mess-tins  and  electric  torches  and  note-books 
from  more  methodical  people,  or  were  over- 
bearing to  batmen,  or  shifted  jobs  on  to  other 
officers,  or  slunk  off  to  bathe  alone  when  they 
should  have  taken  their  sultry  platoon — such 
men  made  enemies  quickly.  Between  Eustace 
and  Hewett,  who  had  been  good  friends  before 
and  were  to  be  good  friends  again,  there  grew 
[106] 


The  Secret  Battle 

up  a  slow  animosity.  Hewett  was  one  of  the 
methodical  class  of  officer,  Eustace  was  one 
of  the  persistent  borrowers.  Moreover,  as  I 
have  said,  he  was  a  cynic,  and  he  would  argue. 
He  had  a  contentious  remark  for  every  mo- 
ment of  the  day;  and  though  this  tormented 
us  all  beyond  bearing,  Hewett  was  the  only 
one  with  both  the  energy  and  the  intellectual 
equipment  to  accept  his  challenges.  So  these 
two  argued  quietly  and  fiercely  in  the  hot  noon, 
or  the  blue  dusk,  till  the  rest  of  us  were  weary 
of  them  both,  and  the  sound  of  Eustace's  harsh 
tones  was  an  agony  to  the  nerves.  They  were 
both  too  consciously  refined  to  lose  their  tem- 
pers healthily,  and  when  they  reached  danger- 
point,  Hewett  would  slink  away  like  an  in- 
jured animal  to  his  burrow.  In  this  conflict 
Harry  took  no  speaking  part,  for  while  in 
spirit  and  affection  he  was  on  Hewett's  side, 
he  paid  intellectual  tribute  to  Eustace's  con- 
duct of  the  argument,  and  listened  as  a  rule  in 
puzzled  silence.  Eustace  again  was  his  cor- 
dial ally  against  Burnett,  while  Hewett  had 
merely  the  indifference  of  contempt  for  that 
officer. 

[107] 


The  Secret  Battle 

So  it  was  all  a  strange  tangle  of  friendship 
and  animosity  and  good-nature  and  bitterness. 
Yet  on  the  surface,  you  understand,  we  lived 
on  terms  of  toleration  and  vague  geniality; 
except  for  the  disputations  of  Hewett  and 
Eustace  there  was  little  open  disagreement. 
In  the  confined  space  of  a  company  mess 
permanent  hostilities  would  make  life  impos- 
sible; it  is  only  generals  who  are  allowed  to 
find  that  they  can  no  longer  "act  with"  each 
other,  and  resign:  platoon  commanders  may 
come  to  the  same  conclusion,  but  they  have 
to  go  on  acting.  And  so  openly  we  laughed 
and  endured  and  bore  with  each  other.  Only 
there  was  always  this  undertone  of  irritations 
and  animosities  which,  in  the  maddening  con- 
ditions of  our  life,  could  never  be  altogether 
silenced,  and  might  at  any  moment  rise  to  a 
strangled  scream. 

Harry's  appointment  as  Scout  Officer  was 
the  first  thing  to  set  Burnett  against  Harry, 
though  already  many  things  had  set  Harry 
against  Burnett.  It  had  been  commonly  as- 
sumed, in  view  of  Burnett's  "backwoods"  repu- 
tation, that  he  would  succeed  Martin  as  Scout 
[108] 


The  Secret  Battle 

Officer.  The  Colonel's  selection  of  Harry 
took  us  a  little  by  surprise,  though  it  only 
showed  that  the  Colonel  was  a  keener  judge 
of  character  and  ability  than  the  rest  of  us. 
No  one,  I  think,  was  more  genuinely  pleased 
that  Burnett  was  not  to  be  Scout  Officer  than 
Burnett  himself;  but  in  the  interests  of  his 
"dare-devil"  pretensions  he  had  to  affect  an 
air  of  disappointment,  and  let  it  be  known 
by  grunts  and  shrugs  and  sour  looks  that  he 
considered  the  choice  of  Harry  to  be  an  in- 
jury to  himself  and  the  regiment.  As  far  as 
Harry  was  concerned  this  resentment  of 
Burnett's  was  more  or  less  genuine,  for  his  re- 
luctance to  take  on  the  job  did  not  prevent  him 
being  jealous  of  the  man  who  did. 

Then  Burnett  was  one  of  the  people  who 
had  nothing  of  his  own,  and  seemed  to  regard 
Harry,  as  the  youngest  of  us  all,  as  the  proper 
person  to  provide  him  with  all  the  necessaries 
of  life.  In  those  days  we  had  no  plates  or 
crockery,  but  ate  and  drank  out  of  our 
scratched  and  greasy  mess-tins.  Harry's  mess- 
tin  disappeared,  and  for  three  days  he  was 
compelled  to  borrow  from  Hewett  or  myself 

[109] 


The  Secret  Battle 

—a  tedious  and,  to  him,  hateful  business.  One 
day  Burnett  had  finished  his  meal  a  long  way 
ahead  of  any  of  us,  and  Harry,  in  the  despera- 
tion of  hungry  waiting,  asked  him  for  the  loan 
of  his  mess-tin.  Automatically  he  looked  at 
the  bottom  of  the  tin,  and  there  found  his  in- 
itials inscribed.  It  was  his  own  tin.  Fur- 
ther, some  one  had  tried  to  scratch  the  initials 
out.  Harry  kept  his  temper  with  obvious  dif- 
ficulty. Burnett  knew  well  that  he  had  lost 
his  mess-tin  (we  were  all  sick  of  hearing  it), 
but  he  said  he  was  quite  ignorant  of  having  it 
in  his  possession.  When  Harry  argued  with 
him,  Burnett  sent  for  his  batman  and  cursed 
him  for  taking  another  officer's  property. 
The  wretched  man  mumbled  that  he  had 
"found"  it,  and  withdrew;  and  we  all  sat  in 
silence  teeming  with  distrustful  thoughts.  We 
were  sorry  for  the  batman;  we  were  sorry  for 
Harry.  Burnett  may  not  have  taken  the  mess- 
tin  with  his  own  hands,  but  morally  he  stood 
convicted  of  an  action  which  was  "dirty." 

Then  Burnett  and  Harry  took  a  working- 
party  together  to  dig  in  the  gully.  Burnett 
was  the  senior  officer,  but  left  Harry  to  work 
[no] 


The  Secret  Battle 

all  night  in  the  whispering  rain  of  stray  bul- 
lets, while  he  sat  in  an  Engineers'  dug-out  and 
drank  whisky.  Harry  did  not  object  to  this, 
the  absence  of  Burnett  being  always  congenial 
to  him.  But  next  day  there  came  a  compli- 
mentary message  from  the  Brigadier  about  the 
work  of  that  working-party.  Burnett  was  sent 
for  and  warmly  praised  by  the  Colonel.  Bur- 
nett stood  smugly  and  said  nothing.  Harry, 
when  he  heard  of  it,  was  furious,  and  wanted, 
he  said,  to  "have  a  row"  with  him.  What  he 
expected  Burnett  to  say,  I  don't  know ;  the  man 
could  hardly  stand  before  his  Colonel  and  say, 
"Sir,  Penrose  did  all  the  work,  I  was  in  the 
Engineers'  dug-out  nearly  all  the  time  with 
my  friends,  and  had  several  drinks."  A  row, 
in  any  case,  would  be  intolerable  in  that 
cramped,  intimate  existence,  and  I  dissuaded 
Harry,  though  I  made  Egerton  have  a  few 
words  with  Burnett  on  the  subject.  Harry 
contented  himself  with  ironic  comments  on 
Burnett's  "gallantry"  and  "industry,"  asking 
him  blandly  at  meals  if  he  expected  to  get  his 
promotion  over  that  working-party,  and  sug- 
gesting to  Egerton  that  Burnett  should  take 

[mi 


The  Secret  Battle 

Harry's  next  turn  of  duty  "because  he  is  so 
good  at  it."  This  made  Burnett  beautifully 
angry.  But  it  was  bitter  badinage,  and  did  not 
improve  the  social  atmosphere. 

There  were  a  number  of  such  incidents  be- 
tween the  two ;  they  were  very  petty  in  them- 
selves, some  of  them,  like  a  fly,  but  in  their 
cumulative  effect  very  large  and  distressing. 
In  many  cases  there  was  no  verbal  engagement, 
or  only  an  angry,  inarticulate  mutter.  Public, 
unfettered  angers  were  necessarily  avoided. 
But  this  pent-up,  suppressed  condition  of  the 
quarrel  made  it  more  malignant,  like  a  dis- 
ease. And  it  got  on  Harry's  nerves;  indeed, 
it  got  on  mine.  It  became  an  active  element 
in  that  vast  complex  of  irritation  and  decay 
which  was  eating  into  his  young  system ;  it  was 
leagued  with  the  flies,  and  the  dust,  and  the 
smells,  and  the  bad  food,  and  the  wind,  and  the 
harassing  shells  of  the  Turks,  and  the  disgust- 
ful torment  of  disease. 

Ill 

For  Harry  was  a  very  sick  man.  He  had 
endured  through  all  the  stages  of  dysentery, 

[112] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  now  lived  with  that  awful  legacy  of  weak- 
ness of  which  I  have  spoken.  And  the  dis- 
ease had  not  wholly  left  him,  but  some  days  he 
lay  faint  with  excruciating  spasms  of  pain. 
Slightly  built  and  constitutionally  fragile  at 
the  beginning,  he  was  now  a  mere  wasted  wisp 
of  a  man.  The  flesh  seemed  to  have  melted 
from  his  face,  and  when  he  stood  naked  on  the 
beach  it  seemed  that  the  moving  of  his  bones 
must  soon  tear  holes  in  the  unsubstantial  skin. 
Standing  in  the  trench  with  the  two  points  of 
his  collar-bone  jutting  out  like  promontories 
above  his  shirt,  and  a  pale  film  of  dust  over 
his  face,  he  looked  like  the  wan  ghost  of  some 
forgotten  soldier.  On  the  Western  Front, 
where  one  case  of  dysentery  created  a  panic 
among  the  authorities,  and  in  the  most  urgent 
days  they  have  never  had  to  rely  on  skeletons 
to  fight,  he  would  long  since  have  been  bun- 
dled off.  But  in  this  orgy  of  disease,  no  offi- 
cer could  be  sent  away  who  was  willing  to 
stay  and  could  still  totter  up  the  gully.  And 
Harry  would  not  go.  When  he  went  to  the 
battalion  doctor  it  was  with  an  airy  request 
for  the  impotent  palliatives  then  provided  for 


The  Secret  Battle 

early  dysentery,  and  with  no  suggestion  of  the 
soul-destroying  sickness  that  was  upon  him. 
One  day  he  would  not  come  down  to  the  rocks 
and  bathe,  so  feeble  he  was.  "I  know  now," 
he  said,  "the  meaning  of  that  bit  in  the  psalms, 
'My  knees  are  like  water  and  all  my  bones  are 
out  of  joint.' "  "Harry,"  I  said,  "you're  not 
fit  to  stay  here — why  not  go  sick?"  At  which 
he  smiled  weakly,  and  said  that  he  might  be 
better  in  a  day  or  two.  Pathetic  hope !  all  men 
had  it.  And  so  Hewett  and  I  walked  down,  a 
little  sadly,  alone,  marvelling  at  the  boy's 
courage.  For  it  seemed  to  us  that  he  wanted 
to  stay  and  see  it  through,  and  if  indeed  he 
might  recover  we  could  not  afford  to  lose 
him.  So  we  said  no  more. 

But  by  degrees  I  gained  a  different  impres- 
sion. Harry  still  opened  his  mind  to  Hewett 
and  myself  more  than  to  any  one  else,  but  it 
was  by  no  direct  speech,  rather  by  the  things 
he  did  not  say,  the  sentences  half  finished,  the 
look  in  his  eyes,  that  the  knowledge  came — 
that  Harry  did  want  to  go  away.  The  ro- 
mantic impulse  had  perished  long  since  in  that 
ruined  trench;  but  now  even  the  more  mun- 


The  Secret  Battle 

dane  zest  of  doing  his  duty  had  lost  its  savour 
in  the  long  ordeal  of  sickness  and  physical  dis- 
tress. He  did  want  to  go  sick.  He  had  only 
to  speak  a  word;  and  still  he  would  not 
go.  When  I  knew  this,  I  marvelled  at  his 
courage  yet  more. 

For  many  days  I  watched  him  fighting  this 
lonely  conflict  with  himself,  a  conflict  more 
terrible  and  exacting  than  any  battle.  Some- 
times the  doctor  came  and  sat  under  our  olive- 
tree,  and  some  of  us  spoke  jestingly  of  the 
universal  sickness,  and  asked  him  how  ill  we 
must  be  before  he  would  send  us  home. 
Harry  alone  sat  silent;  it  was  no  joke  to  him. 
"And  how  do  you  feel  now,  Penrose?"  said 
the  doctor.  "Are  you  getting  your  arrow- 
root all  right?"  Harry  opened  his  mouth — 
but  for  a  moment  said  nothing.  I  think  it  had 
been  in  his  mind  to  say  what  he  did  feel,  but 
he  only  murmured,  "All  right,  thank  you, 
doctor."  The  doctor  looked  at  him  queerly. 
He  knew  well  enough,  but  it  was  his  task  to 
keep  men  on  the  Peninsula,  not  to  send  them 
away. 

Once  I  spent  an  afternoon  in  one  of  the  hos- 


The  Secret  Battle 

pital  ships  in  the  bay:  when  I  came  back  and 
told  them  of  the  cool  wards  and  pleasant 
nurses,  and  all  the  peace  and  cleanliness  and 
comfort  that  was  there,  I  caught  Harry's  wist- 
ful gaze  upon  me,  and  I  stopped.  It  was  well 
enough  for  the  rest  of  us  in  comparative  health 
to  imagine  luxuriously  those  unattainable 
amenities.  None  of  us  were  ill  enough  then 
to  go  sick  if  we  wished  it.  Harry  was.  And 
I  knew  that  such  talk  must  be  an  intolerable 
temptation. 

Then  one  day,  on  his  way  up  to  the  line 
with  a  working-party,  he  nearly  fainted.  "I 
felt  it  coming  on,"  he  told  me,  "in  a  block. 
I  thought  to  myself,  'This  is  the  end  of  it  all 
for  me,  anyhow.'  I  actually  did  go  off  for  a 
moment,  I  think,  and  then  some  one  pushed 
me  from  behind — and  as  we  moved  on  it  wore 

off  again.    I  did  swear "    Harry  stopped, 

realizing  the  confession  he  had  made.  I  tried 
to  feel  for  myself  the  awful  bitterness  of  that 
awakening  in  the  stifling  trench,  shuffling  up- 
hill with  the  flies.  .  .  .  But  he  had  told  me 
now  everything  I  had  only  guessed  before,  and 


The  Secret  Battle 

once  more  I  urged  him  to  go  sick  and  have 
done  with  it. 

"I  would,"  he  said,  "only  I'm  not  sure  .  .  . 
I  know  I'm  jolly  ill,  and  not  fit  for  a  thing  .  .  . 
but  I'm  not  sure  if  it's  only  that.  ...  I  was 
pretty  brave  when  I  got  here,  I  think"  (I  nod- 
ded) ,  "and  I  think  I  am  still  ...  but  last  time 
we  were  in  the  line  I  found  I  didn't  like  look- 
ing over  the  top  nearly  so  much  ...  so  I 
want  to  be  sure  that  I'm  quite  all  right  .  .  . 
in  that  way  .  .  .  before  I  go  sick.  .  .  .  Be- 
sides, you  know  what  everybody  says.  .  .  ." 

"Nobody  could  say  anything  about  you,"  I 
told  him ;  "one's  only  got  to  look  at  you  to  see 
that  you've  got  one  foot  in  the  grave."  "Well, 
we  go  up  again  tomorrow,"  he  said,  "and  if 
I'm  not  better  after  that,  I'll  think  about  it 
again." 

I  had  to  be  content  with  that,  though  I  was 
not  content.  For  my  fears  were  fulfilled, 
since  in  the  grip  of  this  sickness  he  had  begun 
at  last  to  be  doubtful  of  his  own  courage. 

But  that  night  Burnett  went  to  the  doctor 
and  said  that  he  was  too  ill  to  go  on.  So  far 


The  Secret  Battle 

as  the  rest  of  us  knew,  he  had  never  had  any- 
thing but  the  inevitable  preliminary  attack 
of  dysentery,  though  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that 
most  of  us  were  so  wrapped  up  in  the  exquisite 
contemplation  of  our  own  sufferings,  that  we 
had  little  time  to  study  the  condition  of  others. 
The  doctor,  however,  had  no  doubts  about 
Burnett;  he  sent  him  back  to  us  with  a  flea  in 
his  ear  and  a  dose  of  chlorodyne.  The  story 
leaked  out  quickly,  and  there  was  much  com- 
ment adverse  to  Burnett.  When  Harry  heard 
it,  he  led  me  away  to  his  dug-out.  It  was  an 
evening  of  heavy  calm,  like  the  inside  of  a 
cathedral.  Only  a  few  mules  circling  dustily 
at  exercise  in  the  velvet  gloom,  and  the  dis- 
tant glimmer  of  the  Scotsmen's  fires,  made  any 
stir  of  movement.  The  men  had  gone  early 
to  their  blankets,  and  now  sang  softly  their 
most  sentimental  songs,  reserved  always  for  the 
night  before  another  journey  to  the  line. 
They  sang  them  in  a  low  croon  of  ecstatic  mel- 
ancholy, marvellously  in  tune  with  the  purple 
hush  of  the  evening.  For  all  its  aching  regret 
it  was  a  sound  full  of  hope  and  gentle  resolu- 
tion. Harry  whispered  to  me,  "You  heard 
[118] 


The  Secret  Battle 

about  Burnett?  Thank  God,  nobody  can  say 
those  things  about  me!  I'm  not  going  off  this 
Peninsula  till  I'm  pushed  off." 

I  said  nothing.  It  was  a  heroic  sentiment, 
and  this  was  the  heroic  hour.  It  is  what  men 
say  in  the  morning  that  matters.  .  .  . 

In  the  morning  we  moved  off  as  the  sun 
came  up.  There  had  been  heavy  firing  nearly 
all  night,  and  over  Achi  Baba  in  the  cloudless 
sky  there  hung  a  portent.  It  was  as  though 
some  giant  had  been  blowing  smoke-rings,  and 
with  inhuman  dexterity  had  twined  and  laced 
these  rings  together,  without  any  of  them  los- 
ing their  perfection  of  form.  ...  As  the  sun 
came  up  these  cloud-rings  stood  out  a  rosy 
pink  against  the  blue  distance,  and  while  we 
marched  through  the  sleeping  camps  turned 
gently  through  dull  gold  to  pale  pearl.  I 
have  never  known  what  made  this  marvel,  a 
few  clouds  forgotten  by  the  wind,  or  the  smoke 
of  the  night's  battle;  but  I  marched  with  my 
eyes  upon  it  all  the  stumbling  way  to  Achi 
Baba.  And  when  I  found  Harry  at  a  halt, 
he,  too,  was  gazing  at  the  wonder  with  all  his 
men.  "It's  an  omen,"  he  said. 

["9] 


The  Secret  Battle 

"Good  or  bad?" 

"Good,"  he  said. 

I  have  never  understood  omens;  I  suppose 
they  are  good  or  bad  according  to  the  mind  of 
the  man  who  sees  them:  and  I  was  glad  that 
Harry  thought  it  was  good. 


[120] 


VI 

IT  was  one  of  the  Great  Dates :  one  of  those 
red  dates  which  build  up  the  calendar 
of  a  soldier's  past,  and  dwell  in  his  mem- 
ory when  the  date  of  his  own  birth  is  almost 
forgotten.  It  is  strange  what  definite  sign- 
posts these  dates  of  a  man's  battle-days  become 
in  his  calculation  of  time — like  the  foundation 
of  Rome.  An  old  soldier  will  sigh  and  say, 
"Yes,  I  know  that  was  when  Jim  died — it  was 
ten  days  after  the  Fourth  of  June,"  or,  "I  was 
promoted  the  day  before  the  Twelfth  of  July." 
The  years  pile  up,  and  zero  after  zero  day  is 
added  for  ever  to  his  primitive  calendar,  and 
not  one  of  them  is  thrust  from  his  reverent 
memory ;  but  at  each  anniversary  he  wakes  and 
says,  "This  is  the  3rd  of  February,  or  the  ist 
of  July,"  and  thinks  of  old  companions  who 
went  down  on  that  day;  and  though  he  has 
seen  glorious  successes  since,  he  will  ever  think 

[121] 


The  Secret  Battle 

with  a  special  tenderness  of  the  black  early 
failures  when  he  first  saw  battle  and  his  friends 
going  under.  And  if  in  any  place  where  sol- 
diers gather  and  tell  old  tales,  there  are  two 
men  who  can  say  to  each  other,  "I,  too,  was  at 
Helles  on  such  a  date,"  there  is  a  great  bond 
between  them. 

On  one  of  these  days  we  sat  under  the  olive- 
tree  and  waited.  Up  the  hill  one  of  that  long 
series  of  heroic,  costly  semi-successes  was  go- 
ing through.  We  were  in  reserve.  We  had 
done  six  turns  in  the  trenches  without  doing 
an  attack.  When  we  came  out  we  were  very 
ready  to  attack,  very  sure  of  ourselves.  Now  we 
were  not  so  sure  of  ourselves ;  we  were  waiting, 
and  there  was  a  terrible  noise.  Very  early  the 
guns  had  begun,  and  everywhere,  from  the 
Straits  to  the  sea,  were  the  loud  barkings  of 
the  French  "seventy-fives,"  thinly  assisted  by 
the  British  artillery,  which  was  scanty,  and 
had  almost  no  ammunition.  But  the  big  ships 
came  out  from  Imbros  and  stood  off  and 
swelled  the  chorus,  dropping  their  huge  shells 
on  the  very  peak  of  the  little  sugar-loaf  that 
tops  Achi  Baba,  and  covering  his  western 

[122] 


The  Secret  Battle 

slopes  with  monstrous  eruptions  of  black  and 
yellow. 

Down  in  the  thirsty  wilderness  of  the  rest- 
camps  the  few  troops  in  reserve  lay  restless 
under  occasional  olive-trees,  or  huddled  under 
the  exiguous  shelter  of  ground-sheets  stretched 
over  their  scratchings  in  the  earth.  They 
looked  up  and  saw  the  whole  of  the  great  hill 
swathed  in  smoke  and  dust  and  filthy  fumes, 
and  heard  the  ruthless  crackle  of  the  Turks' 
rifles,  incredibly  rapid  and  sustained ;  and  they 
thought  of  their  friends  scrambling  over  in 
the  bright  sun,  trying  to  get  to  those  rifles. 
They  themselves  were  thin  and  wasted  with 
disease,  and  this  uncertainty  of  waiting  in 
readiness  for  they  knew  not  what  plucked  at 
their  nerves.  They  could  not  rest  or  sleep, 
for  the  flies  crawled  over  their  mouths  and 
eyes  and  tormented  them  ceaselessly,  and  great 
storms  of  dust  swept  upon  them  as  they  lay. 
They  were  parched  with  thirst,  but  they  must 
not  drink,  for  their  water-bottles  were  filled 
with  the  day's  allowance,  and  none  knew  when 
they  would  be  filled  again.  If  a  man  took  out 
of  his  haversack  a  chunk  of  bread,  it  was  im- 


The  Secret  Battle 

mediately  black  with  flies,  and  he  could  not 
eat.  Sometimes  a  shell  came  over  the  Straits 
from  Asia  with  a  quick,  shrill  shriek,  and  burst 
at  the  top  of  the  cliffs  near  the  staff  officers 
who  stood  there  and  gazed  up  the  hill  with 
glasses.  All  morning  the  noise  increased,  and 
the  shells  streamed  up  the  hill  with  a  sound 
like  a  hundred  expresses  vanishing  into  a  hun- 
dred tunnels:  and  there  was  no  news.  But 
soon  the  wounded  began  to  trickle  down,  and 
there  were  rumours  of  a  great  success  with 
terrible  losses.  In  the  afternoon  the  news  be- 
came uncertain  and  disturbing.  Most  of  the 
morning's  fruits  had  been  lost.  And  by  eve- 
ning they  knew  that  indeed  it  had  been  a  ter- 
rible day. 

Under  our  olive-tree  we  were  very  fidgety. 
There  had  been  no  mail  for  many  days,  and 
we  had  only  month-old  copies  of  the  Mall 
and  the  Weekly  Times,  which  we  pretended 
listlessly  to  read.  Eustace  had  an  ancient 
Nation,  and  Hewett  a  shilling  edition  of  Van- 
ity Fair.  Harry  in  the  morning  kept  climb- 
ing excitedly  up  the  trees  to  gaze  at  the  obscure 
haze  of  smoke  on  the  hill,  and  trying  vainly 


The  Secret  Battle 

to  divine  what  was  going  on ;  but  after  a  little 
he  too  sat  silent  and  brooding.  We  were  no 
longer  irritable  with  each  other,  but  studiously 
considerate,  as  if  each  felt  that  tomorrow  he 
might  want  to  take  back  a  spiteful  word  and 
the  other  be  dead.  All  our  valises  and  our 
sparse  mess-furniture  had  long  been  packed 
away,  for  we  had  now  been  standing  by  for 
twenty-four  hours,  and  we  lay  uneasily  on  the 
hard  ground,  shifting  continually  from  pos- 
ture to  posture  to  escape  the  unfriendly  pro- 
tuberances of  the  soil.  In  the  tree  the  crickets 
chirped  on  always,  in  strange  indifference  to 
the  storm  of  noise  about  them.  They  were 
hateful,  those  crickets.  .  .  .  Now  and  then 
Egerton  was  summoned  to  Headquarters;  and 
when  he  came  back  each  man  said  to  himself, 
"He  has  got  our  orders."  And  some  would 
not  look  at  him,  but  talked  suddenly  of  some- 
thing else.  And  some  said  to  him  with  a  pain- 
ful cheeriness,  "Any  orders?"  and  when  he 
shook  his  head,  cursed  a  little,  but  in  their 
hearts  wondered  if  they  were  glad.  For  the 
waiting  was  bad  indeed,  but  who  knew  what 
tasks  they  would  have  when  the  orders  came. 


The  Secret  Battle 

.  .  .  Often  the  Reserves  had  the  worst  of  it  in 
these  affairs  ...  a  forlorn  hope  of  an  attack 
without  artillery  .  .  .  digging  a  new  line  un- 
der fire  .  .  .  beating  off  the  counter-attack.  .  .  . 
But  the  waiting  became  intolerable,  and  all 
were  glad,  an  hour  before  sunset,  when  we 
filed  off  slowly  by  half-platoons.  Every  gun 
was  busy  again,  and  all  along  the  path  to  the 
hill  batteries  of  "seventy-fives"  barked  sud- 
denly from  unsuspected  holes,  so  close  that  a 
man's  heart  seemed  to  halt  at  the  shock.  The 
gully  was  full  of  confusion  and  wounded,  and 
tired  officers  and  odd  groups  of  men  bandying 
rumours  and  arguing  in  the  sun.  Half-way 
up  the  tale  came  mysteriously  down  the  line 
that  we  were  to  attack  a  trench  by  ourselves ; 
a  whole  brigade  had  tried  and  failed — there 
was  a  redoubt — there  were  endless  machine- 
guns.  .  .  .  Some  laughed — "a  rumour";  but 
most  men  felt  in  their  heart  that  there  was 
something  in  it,  and  inwardly  "pulled  them- 
selves together."  At  last  they  were  to  be  in 
a  real  battle,  and  walk  naked  in  the  open 
through  the  rapid  fire.  And  as  they  moved 
on,  there  came  over  them  an  overpowering 


The  Secret  Battle 

sense  of  the  irrevocable.  They  thought  of  that 
summer  day  in  1914  when  they  walked  light- 
hearted  into  the  recruiting  office.  It  had 
seemed  a  small  thing  then,  but  that  was  what 
had  done  it;  had  brought  them  into  this  blazing 
gully,  with  the  frogs  croaking,  and  the  men 
moaning  in  corners  with  their  legs  messed  up. 
...  If  they  had  known  about  this  gully  then 
and  these  flies,  and  this  battle  they  were  going 
to,  then,  perhaps,  they  would  have  done  some- 
thing else  in  that  August  .  .  .  gone  into  a 
dockyard  .  .  .  joined  the  A.  S.  C.  like  Jim 
Roberts.  .  .  .  Well,  they  hadn't,  and  they 
were  not  really  sorry  .  .  .  only  let  there  be 
no  more  waiting  .  .  .  and  let  it  be  quick  and 
merciful,  no  stomach  wounds  and  nastiness 
...  no  lying  out  in  the  scrub  for  a  day  with 
the  sun,  and  the  flies,  and  no  water. 

Look  at  that  officer  on  the  stretcher  .  .  . 
he  won't  last  long  .  .  .  remember  his  face  .  .  . 
his  platoon  relieved  us  somewhere  .  .  .  where 
was  it?  ...  Hope  I  don't  get  one  like  him 
.  .  .  nasty  mess  .  .  .  would  like  one  in  the 
shoulder  if  it's  got  to  be  ...  hospital  ship 
.  .  .  get  home,  perhaps  ...  no,  they  send 


The  Secret  Battle 

you  to  Egypt  .  .  .  officer  said  so.  ...  Hallo, 
halting  here  .  .  .  Merton  trench  .  .  .  old 
Reserve  Line.  .  .  .  Getting  dark  .  .  .  night- 
attack?  .  .  .  not  wait  till  dawn,  I  hope  .  .  . 
can't  stand  much  more  waiting.  .  .  .  Pass  the 
word,  Company  Commanders  to  see  the 
Colonel  .  .  .  that's  done  it,  there  goes  Eger- 
ton  .  .  .  good  man,  thinks  a  lot  of  me  ... 
try  not  to  let  him  down.  .  .  . 

But  what  Egerton  and  the  others  heard  from 
the  Colonel  made  a  vain  thing  of  all  this  brac- 
ing of  men's  spirits.  There  was  a  muddle; 
the  attack  was  cancelled  ...  no  one  knew 
where  the  Turks  were,  where  anybody  was 
...  we  were  to  stay  the  night  in  this  old  re- 
serve trench  and  relieve  the  front  line  in  the 
morning.  .  .  . 

When  Egerton  told  his  officers  only  Burnett 
spoke :  he  said  "Damn.  As  usual.  I  wanted 
a  go  at  the  old  Turks":  and  we  knew  that  it 
was  not  true.  The  rest  of  us  said  nothing,  for 
we  were  wondering  if  it  were  true  of  ourselves. 
I  went  with  Harry  to  his  platoon;  they  too 
said  nothing,  and  their  faces  were  expression- 
less. But  they  were  cold  now,  and  hungry, 
[128] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  suddenly  very  tired;  and  they  had  no 
real  fire  of  battle  in  them;  they  had  waited 
too  long  for  this  crowning  experience  of  an 
attack,  braced  themselves  for  it  too  often  to 
be  disappointed ;.  and  I  knew  that  they  were 
glad.  But  they  did  not  mind  being  glad; 
they  pondered  no  doubts  about  themselves, 
only  curled  up  like  animals  in  corners  to 
sleep.  .  .  . 

Harry,  too,  no  doubt,  had  braced  himself 
like  the  rest  of  us,  and  he,  too,  must  have  been 
glad,  glad  to  lie  down  and  look  forward  after 
all  to  seeing  another  sunrise.  But  I  thought 
of  his  doubts  about  himself,  and  I  felt  that  this 
business  was  far  from  easing  his  burden.  For 
me  and  for  the  men  it  was  a  simple  thing — 
the  postponement  of  a  battle  with  the  Turks; 
for  Harry  it  was  the  postponement  of  a  per- 
sonal test:  the  battle  inside  him  still  went  on; 
only  it  went  on  more  bitterly. 

II 

There  was  a  great  muddle  in  front.  Troops 
of  two  different  brigades  were  hopelessly  en- 
tangled in  the  shallow  trenches  they  had  taken 

[129] 


The  Secret  Battle 

from  the  Turks.  They  had  few  officers  left, 
and  their  staffs  had  the  most  imperfect  im- 
pressions of  the  whereabouts  of  their  mangled 
commands.  So  the  sun  was  well  up  when  we 
finally  took  over  the  line ;  this  was  in  defiance 
of  all  tradition,  but  the  Turk  was  shaken  and 
did  not  molest  us.  The  men  who  passed  us 
on  their  way  down  grimly  wished  us  joy  of 
what  they  had  left;  their  faces  were  pale  and 
drawn,  full  of  loathing  and  weariness,  but  they 
said  little;  and  the  impression  grew  that  there 
was  something  up  there  which  they  could  not 
even  begin  to  describe.  It  was  a  still,  scorch- 
ing morning,  and  as  we  moved  on  the  air 
became  heavy  with  a  sickening  stench,  the 
most  awful  of  all  smells  that  man  can  be  called 
to  endure,  because  it  preyed  on  the  imagina- 
tion as  well  as  the  senses.  For  we  knew  now 
what  it  was.  We  came  into  a  Turkish  trench, 
broad  and  shallow.  In  the  first  bay  lay  two 
bodies — a  Lowlander  and  a  Turk.  They  lay 
where  they  had  killed  each  other,  and  they 
were  very  foul  and  loathsome  in  the  sun.  A 
man  looked  up  at  them  and  passed  on,  think- 
ing, "Glad  I  haven't  got  to  stay  here."  In  the 
[130] 


The  Secret  Battle 

next  bay  there  were  three  dead,  all  English- 
men; and  in  the  next  there  were  more — and 
he  thought,  "It  was  a  hot  fight  just  here." 
But  as  he  moved  on,  and  in  each  succeeding 
bay  beheld  the  same  corrupt  aftermath  of 
yesterday's  battle,  the  suspicion  came  to  him 
that  this  was  no  local  horror.  Over  the  whole 
front  of  the  attack,  along  two  lines  of  trenches, 
these  regiments  of  dead  were  everywhere 
found,  strung  in  unnatural  heaps  along  the 
parapets,  or  sprawling  horribly  half  into  the 
trench  so  that  he  touched  them  as  he  passed. 
Yet  still  he  could  not  believe,  and  at  each 
corner  thought,  "Surely  there  will  be  none  in 
this  bay." 

But  always  there  were  more;  until,  if  he 
were  not  careful  or  very  callous,  it  began  to 
get  on  his  nerves,  so  that  at  the  traverses  he 
almost  prayed  that  there  might  be  no  more 
beyond.  Yet  many  did  not  realize  what  was 
before  them  till  they  were  finally  posted  in  the 
bays  they  were  to  garrison — three  or  four  in 
a  bay.  Then  they  looked  up  at  the  sprawling 
horrors  on  the  parapet  and  behind  them — just 
above  their  heads,  and  knew  that  these  were 


The  Secret  Battle 

to  be  their  close  companions  all  that  swelter- 
ing day,  and  perhaps  beyond.  The  regiment 
we  had  relieved  had  been  too  exhausted  by 
the  attack,  or  too  short-handed,  to  bury  more 
than  a  few,  and  the  Turkish  snipers  made  it 
impossible  to  do  anything  during  the  day. 
And  so  we  sat  all  the  scorching  hours  of  the 
sun,  or  moved  listlessly  up  and  down,  trying 
not  to  look  upwards.  .  .  .  But  there  was  a 
hideous  fascination  about  the  things,  so  that 
after  a  few  hours  a  man  came  to  know  the 
bodies  in  his  bay  with  a  sickening  intimacy, 
and  could  have  told  you  many  details  about 
each  of  them — their  regiment,  and  how  they 
lay,  and  how  they  had  died,  and  little  things 
about  their  uniforms,  a  missing  button,  or 
some  papers,  or  an  old  photograph  sticking 
out  of  a  pocket.  .  .  .  All  of  these  were  alive 
with  flies,  and  at  noon  when  we  took  out  our 
bread  and  began  to  eat,  the  flies  rose  in  a  great 
black  swarm  and  fell  upon  the  food  in  our 
hands.  After  that  no  one  could  eat.  All 
day  men  were  being  sent  away  by  the  doctor, 
stricken  with  sheer  nausea  by  the  flies  and  the 
stench  and  the  things  they  saw,  and  went  retch- 


The  Secret  Battle 

ing  down  the  trench.  To  keep  away  the  aw- 
ful reek  we  went  about  for  a  little  in  the  old 
gas-helmets,  but  the  heat  and  burden  of  them 
in  the  hot,  airless  trench  was  intolerable.  The 
officers  had  no  dug-outs,  but  sat  under  the 
parapets,  like  the  men.  No  officer  went  sick; 
no  officer  could  be  spared;  and  indeed  we 
seemed  to  have  a  greater  power  of  resistance 
to  this  ordeal  of  disgust  thafi  the  men.  But 
I  don't  know  how  Harry  survived  it.  Being 
already  in  a  very  bad  way  physically,  it  af- 
fected him  more  than  the  rest  of  us,  and  it  was 
the  first  day  I  had  seen  his  cheerfulness  de- 
feated. At  the  worst  he  had  always  been 
ready  to  laugh  a  little  at  our  misfortunes,  the 
great  safety-valve  of  a  soldier,  and  make  iron- 
ical remarks  about  Burnett  or  the  Staff.  This 
day  he  had  no  laugh  left  in  him,  and  I  thought 
sadly  of  that  first  morning  when  he  jumped 
over  the  parapet  to  look  at  a  dead  Turk.  He 
had  seen  enough  now. 

In  the  evening  the  Turk  was  still  a  little 
chastened,  and  all  night  we  laboured  at  the 
burying  of  the  bodies.  It  was  bad  work,  but 
so  strong  was  the  horror  upon  us  that  every 

[133] 


The  Secret  Battle 

man  who  could  be  spared  took  his  part,  care- 
less of  sleep  or  rest,  so  long  as  he  should  not 
sit  for  another  day  with  those  things.  But  we 
could  only  bury  half  of  them  that  night,  and 
all  the  next  day  we  went  again  through  that 
lingering  torment.  And  in  the  afternoon 
when  we  had  orders  to  go  up  to  the  front  line 
after  dusk  for  an  attack,  we  were  glad.  It  was 
one  of  the  very  few  moments  in  my  experience 
when  the  war-correspondent's  legend  of  a  regi- 
ment's pleasure  at  the  prospect  of  battle  came 
true.  For  anything  was  welcome  if  only  we 
could  get  out  of  that  trench,  away  from  the 
smell  and  the  flies,  away  from  those 
bodies.  .  .  . 

Ill 

I  am  not  going  to  tell  you  all  about  that 
attack,  only  so  much  of  it  as  affects  this  his- 
tory, which  is  the  history  of  a  man  and  not  of 
the  war.  It  was  a  one-battalion  affair,  and 
eventually  a  failure.  D  Company  was  in  re- 
serve, and  our  only  immediate  task  was  to  pro- 
vide a  small  digging-party,  forty  men  under 
an  officer,  to  dig  some  sort  of  communication 

[134] 


The  Secret  Battle 

ditch  to  the  new  line  when  taken.  Burnett 
was  told  off  for  this  job ;  we  took  these  things 
more  or  less  in  turn,  and  it  was  his  turn.  And 
Burnett  did  not  like  it.  We  sat  round  a  sin- 
gle candle  under  a  waterproof  sheet  in  a  sort  of 
open  recess  at  the  back  of  the  front  line,  while 
Egerton  gave  him  his  orders.  And  there  ran 
in  my  head  the  old  bit  about  "they  all  began 
with  one  accord  to  make  excuse."  Burnett 
made  no  actual  excuse;  he  could  not.  But 
he  asked  aggressive  questions  about  the  ar- 
rangements which  plainly  said  that  he  con- 
sidered this  task  too  dangerous  and  too  diffi- 
cult for  Burnett.  He  wanted  more  men,  he 
wanted  another  officer — but  no  more  could  be 
spared  from  an  already  small  reserve.  He 
was  full  of  "the  high  ground  on  the  right" 
from  which  his  party  would  "obviously"  be 
enfiladed  and  shot  down  to  a  man.  However, 
he  went.  And  we  sat  listening  to  the  rapid 
fire  or  the  dull  thud  of  bombs,  until  in  front  a 
strange  quiet  fell,  but  to  right  and  left  were 
the  sounds  of  many  machine-guns.  As  usual, 
no  one  knew  what  had  happened,  but  we  ex- 
pected a  summons  at  any  moment.  We  were 


The  Secret  Battle 

all  restless  and  jumpy,  particularly  Harry. 
For  a  man  who  has  doubts  of  himself  or  too 
much  imagination,  to  be  in  reserve  is  the  worst 
thing  possible.  Harry  was  talkative  again, 
and  held  forth  about  the  absurdity  of  the  whole 
attack,  as  to  which  he  was  perfectly  right. 
But  I  felt  that  all  the  time  he  was  thinking, 
"Shall  I  do  the  right  thing?  shall  I  do  the 
right  thing?  shall  I  make  a  mess  of  it?" 

I  went  out  and  looked  over  the  parapet,  but 
could  make  nothing  out.  Then  I  saw  two 
figures  loom  through  the  dark  and  scramble 
into  the  trench.  And  after  them  came  others 
all  along  the  line,  coming  in  anyhow,  in  dis- 
order. Then  Burnett  came  along  the  trench, 
and  crawled  in  under  the  waterproof  sheet. 
I  followed.  "It's  no  good,"  he  was  saying, 
"the  men  won't  stick  it.  It's  just  what  I  told 
you  .  .  .  enfiladed  from  that  high  ground 
over  there — two  machine-guns.  .  .  ." 

"How  many  casualties  have  you  had?"  said 
Egerton. 

"One  killed,  and  two  wounded." 

There  was  silence,  but  it  was  charged  with 
eloquent  thoughts.  It  was  clear  what  had 


The  Secret  Battle 

happened.  The  machine-guns  were  firing 
blindly  from  the  right,  probably  over  the  heads 
of  the  party.  The  small  casualties  showed 
that.  Casualties  are  the  test.  No  doubt  the 
men  had  not  liked  the  stream  of  bullets  over- 
head; at  any  moment  the  gun  might  lower. 
But  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  the  digging 
being  done,  given  an  officer  who  would  assert 
himself  and  keep  the  men  together.  That  was 
what  an  officer  was  for.  And  Burnett  had 
failed.  He  had  let  the  company  down. 

Egerton,  I  knew,  was  considering  what  to 
do.  The  job  had  to  be  done.  But  should  he 
send  Burnett  again,  with  orders  not  to  return 
until  he  had  finished,  as  he  deserved,  or  should 
he  send  a  more  reliable  officer  and  make  sure? 

Then  Harry  burst  in:  "Let  me  take  my 
platoon,"  he  said,  "they'll  stick  it  all  right." 
And  his  tone  was  full  of  contempt  for  Burnett, 
full  of  determination.  No  doubts  about  him 
now. 

Well,  we  sent  him  out  with  his  platoon. 
And  all  night  they  dug  and  sweated  in  the 
dark.  The  machine-gun  did  lower  at  times, 

[137] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  there  were  many  casualties,  but  Harry 
moved  up  and  down  in  the  open,  cheerful  and 
encouraging,  getting  away  the  wounded,  and 
there  were  no  signs  of  the  men  not  sticking  it. 
I  went  out  and  stayed  with  him  for  an  hour 
or  so,  and  thought  him  wonderful.  Curious 
from  what  strange  springs  inspiration  comes. 
For  Harry,  for  the  second  time,  had  been  gen- 
uinely inspired  by  the  evil  example  of  his  en- 
emy. Probably,  in  the  first  place,  he  had  wel- 
comed the  chance  of  doing  something  at  last, 
of  putting  his  doubts  to  the  test,  but  I  am  sure 
that  what  chiefly  carried  him  through  that 
night,  weak  and  exhausted  as  he  was,  was  the 
thought,  "Burnett  let  them  down;  Burnett  let 
them  down;  I'm  not  going  to  let  them  down." 
Anyhow  he  did  very  well. 

But  in  the  morning  he  was  carried  down  to 
the  beach  in  a  high  fever.  And  perhaps  it  was 
just  as  well,  for  I  think  Burnett  would  have 
done  him  a  mischief. 


VII 

SO  Harry  stayed  till  he  was  "pushed"  off, 
as  he  had  promised.  And  I  was  glad 
he  had  gone  like  that  I  had  long 
wanted  him  to  leave  the  Peninsula  somehow, 
for  I  felt  he  should  be  spared  for  greater 
things,  but,  knowing  something  of  his  peculiar 
temperament,  I  did  not  want  his  career  there 
to  end  on  a  note  of  simple  failure — a  dull  sur- 
render to  sickness  in  the  rest-camp.  As  it 
turned  out,  the  accident  of  the  digging-party, 
and  the  way  in  which  Harry  had  seized  his 
chance,  sent  him  off  with  a  renewed  confidence 
in  himself  and,  with  regard  to  Burnett,  even 
a  sense  of  triumph.  So  I  was  not  surprised 
when  his  letters  began  to  reveal  something  of 
the  old  enthusiastic  Harry,  chafing  at  the 
dreary  routine  of  the  Depot,  and  looking  for 
adventure  again.  .  .  .  But  I  am  anticipating. 
They  sent  him  home,  of  course.  It  was  no 
good  keeping  any  one  in  his  condition  at  Egypt 

[139] 


The  Secret  Battle 

or  Malta,  for  the  prolonged  dysentery  had 
produced  the  usual  complications.  I  had  a 
letter  from  Malta,  and  one  from  the  Mediter- 
ranean Glub  at  Gibraltar,  where  he  had  a 
sultry  week  looking  over  the  bay,  seeing  the 
ships  steam  out  for  England,  he  told  me,  and 
longing  to  be  in  one.  For  it  took  many  months 
to  wash  away  the  taste  of  the  Peninsula,  and 
much  more  than  the  austere  comforts  of  the 
hospital  at  Gibraltar.  Even  the  hot  August 
sun  in  the  Alameda  was  hatefully  reminiscent. 
Then  six  weeks'  milk  diet  at  a  hospital  in 
Devonshire,  convalescence,  and  a  month's 
leave. 

Then  Harry  married  a  wife.  I  did  not 
know  the  lady — a  Miss  Thickness — and  she 
does  not  come  into  the  story  very  much,  though 
she  probably  affected  it  a  good  deal.  Wives 
usually  do  affect  a  soldier's  story,  though  they 
are  one  of  the  many  things  which  by  the  ab- 
solute official  standard  of  military  duty  are 
necessarily  not  reckoned  with  at  all.  Not  be- 
ing the  president  of  a  court-martial  I  did 
reckon  with  it;  and  when  I  had  read  Harry's 
letter  about  his  wedding  I  said :  "We  shan't 
[140] 


The  Secret  Battle 

see  him  again."  For  in  those  early  years  it 
was  generally  assumed  that  a  man  returned 
from  service  at  the  front  need  not  go  out  again 
(unless  he  wished)  for  a  period  almost  incal- 
culably remote.  And  being  a  newly  married 
man  myself,  I  had  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
Harry  would  want  to  rush  into  the  breach 
just  yet. 

But  about  May — that  would  be  1916;  we 
had  done  with  Gallipoli  and  come  to  France, 
after  four  months'  idling  in  the  Aegean  Islands 
— I  had  another  letter,  much  delayed,  from 
which  I  will  give  you  an  extract: 

"I  never  thought  I  should  want  to  go  out 
again  (you  remember  we  all  swore  we  never 
should)  but  I  do.  I'm  fed  to  the  teeth  with 
this  place  (the  Depot,  in  Dorsetshire)  ;  noth- 
ing but  company  drill  and  lectures  on  march 
discipline,  and  all  the  old  stuff.  We  still  at- 
tack Hill  219  twice  weekly  in  exactly  the  same 
way,  and  still  .no  one  but  a  few  of  the  officers 
knows  exactly  which  hill  it  is,  since  we  always 
stop  halfway  for  lunchtime,  or  because  there's 
hopeless  confusion.  .  .  .  There's  nobody  amus- 
ing here.  Williams  has  got  a  company  and 


The  Secret  Battle 

swanks  like  blazes  about  'the  front'  but  I  think 
most  people  see  through  him.  .  .  .  My  wife's 
got  rooms  in  a  cottage  near  here,  but  they  won't 
let  me  sleep  out,  and  I  don't  get  there  till  pretty 
late  most  days.  .  .  .  Can't  you  get  the  Colonel 
to  apply  for  me?  I  don't  believe  it's  allowed, 
but  he's  sure  to  be  able  to  wangle  it.  Other- 
wise I  shall  be  here  for  the  rest  of  the  war,  be- 
cause the  more  you've  been  out  the  less  likely 
you  are  to  get  out  again,  if  you  want  to,  while 
there  are  lots  who  don't  want  to  go,  and 
wouldn't  be  any  earthly  good,  and  stand  in 
hourly  danger  of  being  sent.  .  .  .  I  want  to 
see  France.  .  .  ." 

I  answered  on  a  single  sheet: 
"All  very  well,  but  what  about  Mrs.  P.? 
Does  she  concur?"     (I  told  you  I  was  a  mar- 
ried man.) 

His  answer  was  equally  brief: 
"She  doesn't  know,  but  she  would." 
Well,  it  wasn't  my  business,  so  we  "wangled" 
it  (I  was  adjutant  then),  and  Harry  came  out 
to  France.     But  I  was  sorry  for  Mrs.  Penrose. 


The  Secret  Battle 

ii 

I  do  not  know  if  all  this  seems  tedious  and 
unnecessary;  I  hope  not,  for  it  is  very  relevant 
to  the  end  of  the  story,  and  if  this  record  had 
been  in  the  hands  of  certain  persons  the  end 
of  the  story  might  have  been  different.  I  do 
not  know.  Certainly  it  ought  to  have  been 
different. 

Anyhow,  Harry  came  to  France  and  found 
us  in  the  line  at  Souchez.  The  recuperative 
power  of  the  young  soldier  is  very  marvellous. 
No  one  but  myself  would  have  said  that  this 
was  not  the  same  Harry  of  a  year  ago;  for  he 
was  fit  and  fresh  and  bubbling  over  with  keen- 
ness. Only  myself,  who  had  sat  over  the  Dar- 
danelles with  him  and  talked  about  Troy,  knew 
what  was  missing.  There  were  no  more  ro- 
mantic illusions  about  war,  and,  I  think,  no 
more  military  ambitions.  Only  he  was  suffi- 
ciently rested  to  be  very  keen  again,  and  had 
not  yet  seen  enough  of  it  to  be  ordinarily 
bored. 

And  in  that  summer  of  1916  there  was  much 
to  be  said  for  life  in  the  Souchez  sector.  It 


The  Secret  Battle  • 

was  a  "peace-time"  sector,  where  divisions 
stayed  for  months  at  a  time,  and  one  went  in 
and  out  like  clockwork  at  ritual  intervals, 
each  time  into  the  same  trenches,  the  same 
deep  dug-outs,  each  time  back  to  the  same  bil- 
lets, or  the  same  huts  in  the  same  wood.  All 
the  deserted  fields  about  the  line  were  a  mass 
of  poppies  and  cornflowers,  and  they  hung 
over  one  in  extravagant  masses  as  one  walked 
up  the  communication  trench.  In  the  thick 
woods  round  Bouvigny  and  Noulette  there 
were  clusters  of  huts  where  the  resting  time 
was  very  warm  and  lazy  and  companionable, 
with  much  white  wine  and  singing  in  the  eve- 
nings. Or  one  took  a  horse  and  rode  into  Cou- 
pigny  or  Barlin  where  there  had  not  been  too 
much  war,  but  one  could  dine  happily  at  the 
best  estaminet,  and  then  ride  back  contentedly 
under  the  stars. 

In  the  line  also  there  was  not  too  much  war. 
Few  of  the  infantry  on  either  side  ever  fired 
their  rifles;  and  only  a  few  bombers  with  rifle 
grenades  tried  to  injure  the  enemy.  There 
were  short  sectors  of  the  line  on  either  side 
which  became  spasmodically  dangerous  be- 

[144] 


The  Secret  Battle 

cause  of  these  things,  and  at  a  fixed  hour  each 
day  the  Germans  blew  the  same  portions  of 
the  line  to  dust  with  minenwerfers,  our  men 
having  departed  elsewhere  half  an  hour  pre- 
viously, according  to  the  established  routine 
from  which  neither  side  ever  diverged.  Our 
guns  were  very  busy  by  spasms,  and  every  day 
destroyed  small  sections  of  the  thick  red  masses 
of  the  German  wire,  which  were  every  night 
religiously  repaired.  The  German  guns  were 
very  few,  for  the  Somme  battle  was  raging, 
but  at  times  they  flung  whizz-bangs  vaguely 
about  the  line  or  dropped  big  shells  on  the 
great  brows  of  the  Lorette  Heights  behind  us. 
From  the  high  ground  we  held  there  was  a 
good  view,  with  woods  and  red  and  white  vil- 
lages on  the  far  hills  beyond  the  Germans ;  and 
away  to  the  left  one  looked  over  the  battered 
pit  country  towards  Lens,  with  everywhere  the 
tall  pit-towers  all  crumpled  and  bent  into  un- 
couth shapes,  and  grey  slag-heaps  rising  like 
the  Pyramids  out  of  a  wilderness  of  broken  red 
cottages.  To  the  south-east  began  the  Vimy 
Ridge,  where  the  red  Pimple  frowned  over 
the  lines  at  the  Lorette  Heights,  and  all  day 


The  Secret  Battle 

there  was  the  foam  and  blackness  of  bursting 
shells. 

In  the  night  there  was  much  patrolling  and 
bursts  of  machine-gun  fire,  and  a  few  snipers, 
and  enormous  labours  at  the  "improvement 
of  the  line,"  wiring  and  revetting,  and  exquis- 
ite work  with  sand-bags. 

It  was  all  very  gentle  and  friendly  and  ar- 
tificial, and  we  were  happy  together. 

Burnett  had  left  us,  on  some  detached  duty 
or  other,  and  in  that  gentler  atmosphere  Eus- 
tace was  a  good  companion  again. 

Men  grew  lusty  and  well,  and  one  could 
have  continued  there  indefinitely  without 
much  injury  to  body  or  mind.  But  sometimes 
on  a  clear  night  we  saw  all  the  southern  sky 
afire  from  some  new  madness  on  the  Somme, 
and  knew  that  somewhere  in  France  there  was 
real  war.  The  correspondents  wrote  home 
that  the  regiments  "condemned  so  long  to  the 
deadening  inactivity  of  trench  warfare  were 
longing  only  for  their  turn  at  the  Great  Bat- 
tle." No  doubt  they  had  authority:  though 
I  never  met  one  of  those  regiments.  For  our 


The  Secret  Battle 

part  we  were  happy  where  we  were.    We  had 
had  enough  for  the  present. 

Ill 

But  I  digress.  And  yet — no.  For  I  want 
you  to  keep  this  idea  of  the  diversity  of  war 
conditions  before  you,  and  how  a  man  may  be 
in  a  fighting  unit  for  many  months  and  yet  go 
unscathed  even  in  spirit.  Or  in  the  most  Ar- 
cadian parts  of  the  battle  area  he  may  come 
alone  against  some  peculiar  shock  from  which 
he  never  recovers.  It  is  all  chance. 

We  made  Harry  scout  officer  again,  and  he 
was  very  keen.  Between  us  and  the  German 
lines  was  a  honeycomb  of  old  disused  trenches 
where  French  and  Germans  had  fought  for 
many  months  before  they  sat  down  to  watch 
each  other  across  this  maze.  They  were  all 
over-grown  now  with  flowers  and  thick  grasses, 
but  for  the  purposes  of  future  operations  it  was 
important  to  know  all  about  them,  and  every 
night  Harry  wriggled  out  and  dropped  into 
one  of  these  to  creep  and  explore,  and  after- 
wards put  them  on  the  map.  Sometimes  I 

[147] 


The  Secret  Battle 

went  a  little  way  with  him,  and  I  did  not  like 
it.  It  was  very  creepy  in  those  forgotten  al- 
leys, worse  than  crawling  outside  in  the  open, 
I  think,  because  of  the  intense  blackness  and 
the  infinite  possibilities  of  ambush. 

The  Boches,  we  knew,  were  playing  the 
same  game  as  ourselves,  and  might  always  be 
round  the  next  traverse,  so  that  every  ten  yards 
one  went  through  a  new  ordeal  of  expectancy 
and  stealthy,  strained  investigation.  One 
stood  breathless  at  the  corner,  listening,  peer- 
ing, quivering  with  the  strain  of  it,  and  then 
a  rat  dropped  into  the  next  "bay,"  or  behind 
us  one  of  our  Lewis  guns  blazed  off  a  few 
bursts,  shattering  the  silence.  Surely  there 
was  some  one  near  moving  hurriedly  under 
cover  of  the  noise!  Then  you  stood  again, 
stiff  and  cramped  with  the  stillness,  and  you 
wanted  insanely  to  cough,  or  shift  your  weight 
on  to  the  other  foot,  or  your  nose  itched  and 
the  grasses  tickled  your  ear — but  you  must  not 
stir,  must  hardly  breathe.  For  now  all  the 
lines  have  become  mysteriously  hushed,  and 
no  man  fires ;  far  away  one  can  hear  the  rumble 
of  the  German  limbers  coming  up  with  rations 


The  Secret  Battle 

to  the  dump,  and  the  quiet  becomes  unbear- 
able, so  that  you  long  for  some  Titanic  explo- 
sion to  break  it  and  set  you  free  from  waiting. 
Then  a  machine-gun  opens  again,  and  you  slip 
round  the  corner  to  find — nothing  at  all,  only 
more  blackness  and  the  rats  scuttling  away  into 
the  grass,  and  perhaps  the  bones  of  a  French- 
man. And  then  you  begin  all  over  again. 
.  .  .  When  he  has  done  this  sort  of  thing  many 
times  without  any  happening,  an  imperfect 
scout  becomes  careless  through  sheer  weari- 
ness, and  begins  to  blunder  noisily  ahead. 
And  sooner  or  later  he  goes  under.  But 
Harry  was  a  natural  scout,  well  trained,  and 
from  first  to  last  kept  the  same  care,  the  same 
admirable  patience,  and  this  means  a  great 
strain  on  body  and  mind.  ...  In  those  old 
trenches  you  could  go  right  up  to  the  German 
line,  two  hundred  yards  away,  and  this  Harry 
often  did.  The  Germans  had  small  posts  at 
these  points,  waiting,  and  were  very  ready  with 
bombs  and  rifle  grenades.  It  was  a  poor  look- 
out if  you  were  heard  about  there,  and  perhaps 
badly  wounded,  so  that  you  could  not  move, 
two  hundred  yards  away  from  friends  and  all 

[H9] 


The  Secret  Battle 

those  happy  soldiers  who  spent  their  nights 
comfortably  in  trenches  when  you  were  out 
there  on  your  stomach.  Perhaps  your  com- 
panion would  get  away  and  bring  help.  Or 
he  too  might  be  hit  or  killed,  and  then  you 
would  lie  there  for  days  and  nights,  alone  in 
a  dark  hole,  with  the  rats  scampering  and 
smelling  about  you,  till  you  died  of  starvation 
or  loss  of  blood.  You  would  lie  there  listen- 
ing to  your  own  men  chattering  in  the  distance 
at  their  wiring,  and  neither  they  nor  any  one 
would  find  you  or  know  where  you  were,  till 
months  hence  some  other  venturesome  scout 
stumbled  on  your  revolver  in  the  dark.  Or 
maybe  the  line  would  advance  at  last,  and 
some  salvage  party  come  upon  your  uniform 
rotting  in  the  ditch,  and  they  would  take  off 
your  identity  disk  and  send  it  in  to  Headquar- 
ters, and  shovel  a  little  earth  above  your  bones. 
It  might  be  many  years.  .  .  . 

I  am  not  an  imaginative  man,  but  that  was 
the  kind  of  thought  I  had  while  I  prowled 
round  with  Harry  (and  I  never  went  so  far 
as  he).  He  even  had  an  occasional  jest  at  the 
Germans,  and  once  planted  an  old  dummy 


The  Secret  Battle 

close  up  to  their  lines.  There  was  stony 
ground  there,  and,  as  they  took  it  there,  he 
told  me,  it  clattered.  The  next  night  he  went 
there  again  in  case  the  Germans  came  out  to 
capture  "Reggie."  They  did  not,  but  every 
evening  for  many  months  they  put  a  barrage 
of  rifle-grenades  all  about  that  dummy. 

Then  there  was  much  talk  of  "raids,"  and 
all  the  opposite  wire  had  to  be  patrolled  and 
examined  for  gaps  and  weak  places.  This 
meant  crawling  in  the  open  close  up  to  the 
enemy,  naked  under  the  white  flares ;  and  some- 
times they  fell  to  earth  within  a  few  feet  of 
a  scout  and  sizzled  brilliantly  for  intermin- 
able seconds;  there  was  a  sniper  somewhere 
near,  and  perhaps  a  machine-gun  section,  and 
surely  they  could  see  him,  so  large,  so  illum- 
inated, so  monstrously  visible  he  felt.  It  was 
easy  when  there  was  not  too  much  quiet,  but 
many  echoes  of  scattered  shots  and  the  noise 
of  bullets  rocketing  into  space,  or  long  bursts 
of  machine-gun  fire,  to  cover  your  movements. 
But  when  that  terrible  silence  fell  it  was  very 
difficult.  For  then  how  loud  was  the  rustle 
of  your  stealthiest  wriggle,  how  sinister  the 


The  Secret  Battle 

tiny  sounds  of  insects  in  the  grass.  Every- 
where there  were  stray  strands  of  old  barbed 
wire  which  caught  in  your  clothes  and  needed 
infinite  patience  to  disentangle;  when  you  got 
rid  of  one  barb  another  clung  to  you  as  the 
wire  sprang  back,  or,  if  you  were  not  skilful, 
it  clashed  on  a  post  or  a  rifle,  or  a  tin  can, 
with  a  noise  like  cymbals.  You  came  across 
strange  things  as  you  crawled  out  there — dead 
bodies,  and  bits  of  equipment,  and  huge  un- 
exploded  shells.  Or  you  touched  a  rat  or  a 
grass-snake  that  made  you  shiver  as  it  moved ; 
the  rats  and  the  field-mice  ran  over  you  if  you 
lay  still  for  long,  and  once  Harry  saw  a  Ger- 
man patrol-dog  sniffing  busily  in  front  of  him. 
Sometimes  as  you  went  up  wind  you  put  your 
hand  suddenly  on  a  dead  man,  and  had  to  lie 
close  beside  him  for  cover.  Or  you  scented 
him  far  off  like  a  dog  nosing  through  the  grass, 
and  made  him  a  landmark,  whispering  to  your 
companion,  "Keep  fifty  yards  from  the  dead 
'un,"  or  "Make  for  the  dead  Boche." 

When  the  lights  went  up  you  lay  very  close, 
peering  ahead  under  your  cap ;  and  as  they  fell 
away  to  the  ground  all  your  vision  became  full 


The  Secret  Battle 

of  moving  things  and  fugitive  shadows.  The 
thick  rows  of  wiring  posts  looked  like  men 
working,  and  that  cluster  of  stones  like  the 
head  of  a  man  in  a  shell-hole,  watching  .  .  . 
watching  you  .  .  .  gone  in  an  instant.  .  .  . 
Then  you  waited  tensely  for  the  next  light. 
There  is  the  murmur  of  voices  somewhere, 
very  difficult  to  locate.  For  a  long  while  you 
stalk  it,  ready  to  attack  some  patrol,  some 
working-party.  Then  you  hear  a  familiar 
Tyneside  curse  ...  it  is  A  Company  wiring, 
with  much  noise. 

All  this,  as  I  have  said,  is  a  heavy  strain  on 
mind  and  body  and  nerve.  It  requires  a  pe- 
culiar kind  of  courage,  a  lonely,  cold-blooded 
kind  of  courage.  Many  men  who  would  do 
well  in  a  slap-dash  fight  in  the  light  of  day 
are  useless  as  scouts.  Not  only  are  they  noisy 
and  impatient,  but  they  cannot  stand  it. 

And  yet  it  is  no  job  for  a  very  imaginative 
man.  There  are  too  many  things  you  can 
imagine,  if  you  once  begin.  The  more  you 
know  about  it,  the  more  there  is  to  imagine, 
and  the  greater  the  strain  becomes.  Now 
Harry  had  a  very  vivid  imagination,  and  he 


The  Secret  Battle 

knew  all  about  it — and  yet  he  played  this  game 
nearly  every  night  we  were  in  the  line  for  three 
months  .  .  .  nothing  theatrical,  you  under- 
stand, nor  even  heroic  by  popular  standards, 
no  stabbing  affrays,  no  medals  .  .  .  but  by  my 
standards  it  was  very  nearly  heroic,  and  I  don't 
know  how  he  did  it. 

But  this  was  forgotten  later  on. 

IV 

Then  Harry  had  a  shock.  There  was  a 
large  sap  running  out  from  our  line  along  the 
crown  of  a  steep  ridge.  This  sap  was  not  held 
during  the  day,  but  at  night  was  peopled  with 
bombers  and  snipers,  and  it  was  a  great  start- 
ing-place for  the  patrols.  One  night  Harry 
went  out  from  this  sap  and  crawled  down  the 
face  of  the  ridge.  It  was  a  dark  night,  and 
the  Boches  were  throwing  up  many  flares. 
One  of  these  came  to  earth  ten  yards  from 
Harry.  At  that  moment  he  was  halfway 
down  the  slope,  crouched  on  one  knee.  How- 
ever, when  flares  are  about,  to  keep  still  in 
any  posture  is  better  than  to  move,  so  Harry 
remained  rigid.  But  one  of  the  new  scouts 


The  Secret  Battle 

behind  was  just  leaving  the  sap,  and  hovered 
uncertainly  on  the  skyline  as  the  light  flared 
and  sizzled  below.  Possibly  he  was  seen,  pos- 
sibly what  followed  was  a  chance  freak  of  the 
Germans.  Anyhow,  a  moment  later  they 
opened  with  every  machine-gun  in  the  line, 
with  rifles,  rifle-grenades,  and  high-velocity 
shells.  So  venomous  was  the  fire  that  every 
man  in  the  line  believed — and  afterwards 
hotly  asserted — that  the  whole  fury  of  it  was 
concentrated  on  his  particular  yard  of  trench. 
Few  of  us  thought  of  the  unhappy  scouts  lying 
naked  outside.  Harry,  of  course,  flattened 
himself  to  the  ground,  and  tried  to  wriggle 
into  a  hollow;  on  level  ground  you  may  with 
luck  be  safe  under  wild  fire  of  this  kind  for  a 
long  time.  Being  on  a  slope,  Harry  was  hope- 
lessly exposed.  "I  lay  there,"  he  told  me, 
"and  simply  sweated  with  funk;  you  won't 
believe  me,  but  at  one  time  I  could  literally 
feel  a  stream  of  machine-gun  bullets  ruffling 
my  hair,  and  thudding  into  the  bank  just  above 
my  back  .  .  .  and  they  dropped  half  a  dozen 
whizz-bangs  just  in  front  of  me.  While  it  was 
going  on  I  couldn't  have  moved  for  a  thou- 


The  Secret  Battle 

sand  pounds.  ...  I  felt  pinned  to  the  ground 
.  .  .  then  there  was  a  lull,  and  I  leapt  up  ... 
so  did  old  Smith  .  .  .  bolted  for  the  sap,  and 
simply  dived  in  head  first  .  .  .  they  were  still 
blazing  off  sixteen  to  the  dozen,  and  it  was  the 
mercy  of  God  we  weren't  hit  .  .  .  talk  about 
wind-up.  .  .  .  And  when  we  got  in  two  bomb- 
ers thought  it  was  an  attack,  and  took  us  for 
Boches.  .  .  .  Rather  funny,  while  the  strafe 
was  going  on  I  kept  thinking,  Toor  old  Smith, 
he's  a  married  man'  (he  was  a  few  yards  from 
me)  ...  and  Smith  tells  me  he  was  think- 
ing, 'Mr.  Penrose  ...  a  married  man  .  .  . 
married  man.'  .  .  *  What  about  some  more 
whisky?" 

Well,  he  made  a  joke  of  it,  as  one  tries  to  do 
as  long  as  possible,  and  that  night  was  almost 
happily  exhilarated,  as  a  man  sometimes  is 
after  escaping  narrowly  from  an  adventure. 
But  I  could  see  that  it  had  been  a  severe  shock. 
The  next  night  he  had  a  cold  and  a  bad  cough, 
and  said  he  would  not  go  out  for  fear  of  "mak- 
ing a  noise  and  giving  the  show  away."  The 
following  night  he  went  out,  but  came  in  very 
soon,  and  sat  rather  glum  in  the  dug-out,  think- 


The  Secret  Battle 

ing  of  something.  (I  always  waited  up  till 
he  came  in  to  report,  and  we  used  to  "discuss 
the  situation"  over  some  whisky  or  a  little 
white  wine.) 

The  following  day  the  Colonel  gave  him  a 
special  job  to  do.  There  was  the  usual  talk 
of  a  "raid"  on  a  certain  section  of  the  enemy 
lines;  but  there  was  a  theory  that  this  par- 
ticular section  had  been  evacuated.  Flares 
were  sent  up  from  all  parts  of  it,  but  this  was 
supposed  to  be  the  work  of  one  man,  a  hard 
worker,  who  walked  steadily  up  and  down, 
pretending  to  be  a  company.  Harry  was  told 
off  to  test  the  truth  of  this  myth — to  get  right 
up  to  that  trench,  to  look  in,  and  see  what  was 
in  it.  It  was  a  thing  he  had  done  twice  before, 
at  least,  though  myself  I  should  not  have  cared 
to  do  it  all.  It  meant  the  usual  breathless, 
toilsome  wriggle  across  No  Man's  Land, 
avoiding  the  flares  and  the  two  snipers  who 
covered  that  bit  of  ground,  finding  a  gap  in  the 
wire,  getting  through  without  being  seen, 
without  noise,  without  catching  his  clothes  on 
a  wandering  barb,  or  banging  his  revolver 
against  a  multitude  of  tin  cans.  Then  you 

[157] 


The  Secret  Battle 

had  to  listen  and  wait,  and,  if  possible,  get  a 
look  into  the  trench.  When  (and  if)  you  had 
done  that  you  had  to  get  back,  turn  round  in 
a  tiny  space,  pass  the  same  obstacles,  the  same 
snipers.  ...  If  at  any  stage  you  were  spotted 
the  odds  against  your  getting  back  at  all  were 
extremely  large.  .  .  . 

However,  Harry  was  a  scout,  and  it  was  his 
job.  In  the  afternoon  of  that  day  I  met  him 
somewhere  in  the  line  and  made  some 
would-be  jocular  remark  about  his  night's 
work.  He  seemed  to  me  a  little  worried,  pre- 
occupied, and  answered  shortly.  Hewett  was 
sitting  near,  shaving  in  the  sun,  and  said  to 
him:  "You're  a  nasty,  cold-blooded  fellow, 
Harry,  crawling  about  like  a  young  snake 
every  night.  But  I  suppose  you  like  it." 

Harry  said  slowly,  with  a  casual  air: 
"Well,  so  I  did,  but  I  must  say  that  strafe  the 
other  night  put  the  wind  up  me  properly — 
and  when  I  went  out  last  night  I  found  I  was 
thinking  all  the  time,  'Suppose  they  did  that 
again  ?'  .  .  .  and  when  I  got  on  the  top  of  a 
ridge  or  anywhere  a  bit  exposed,  I  kept  imag- 
ining what  it  would  be  like  if  all  those 
[158] 


The  Secret  Battle 

machine-guns  started  just  then  .  .  .  simply 
dashed  into  a  shell-hole  .  .  .  and  I  found  my- 
self working  for  safe  spots  where  one  would 
be  all  right  in  case  of  accidents.  .  .  .  Sort  of 
lost  confidence,  you  know." 

It  was  all  said  in  a  matter-of-fact  manner, 
as  if  he  was  saying,  "I  don't  like  marmalade 
so  much  as  I  used  to  do,"  and  there  was  no  sug- 
gestion that  he  was  not  ready  to  go  and  look 
in  the  Boche  Front  Line  or  the  Unter  den 
Linden,  if  necessary.  But  I  was  sorry  about 
this.  I  told  him  that  he  must  not  imagine; 
that  that  strafe  was  an  unique  affair,  never 
likely  to  be  repeated.  But  when  I  went  back 
to  the  dug-out  I  spoke  to  the  Colonel. 

That  night  I  went  up  with  Harry  to  Foster 
Alley,  and  watched  him  writhing  away  into 
the  grey  gloom.  There  were  many  stars,  and 
you  could  follow  him  for  thirty  yards.  And 
as  I  watched  I  wondered,  "Is  he  thinking, 
'Supposing  they  do  that  again?'  and  when  he 
gets  over  near  the  wire,  will  he  be  thinking, 
'What  would  happen  if  they  saw  me  now?' 
If  so,"  I  said,  "God  help  him,"  and  went  back 
to  Headquarters. 

[159] 


The  Secret  Battle 

Three  hours  later  he  came  into  the  dug-out, 
where  I  sat  with  the  Colonel  making  out  an 
Intelligence  Report.  He  was  very  white  and 
tired,  and  while  he  spoke  to  the  Colonel  he 
stood  at  the  bottom  of  the  muddy  steps  with 
his  head  just  out  of  the  candlelight.  All  the 
front  of  his  tunic  was  muddy,  and  there  were 
two  rents  in  his  breeches. 

He  said,  "Very  sorry,  sir,  but  I  couldn't  get 
through.  I  got  pretty  close  to  the  wire,  but 
couldn't  find  a  gap."  "Was  there  much  fir- 
ing?" said  the  Colonel.  "The  usual  two 
snipers  and  a  machine-gun  on  the  left;  from 
what  I  heard  I  should  say  there  were  a  good 
many  men  in  that  part  of  the  trench — but  I 
couldn't  swear."  Now  what  the  Colonel  had 
wanted  was  somebody  who  could  swear;  that 
was  what  the  Brigade  wanted;  so  he  was  not 
pleased.  But  he  was  a  kind,  understanding 
fellow,  and  all  he  said  was,  "Well,  I'm  sorry, 
too,  Penrose,  but  no  doubt  you  did  your  best." 
And  he  went  to  bed. 

Then  I  opened  some  Perrier  (we  still  had 
Perrier  then),  and  gave  Harry  a  strong 
whisky,  and  waited.  For  I  knew  that  there  was 

[i  60] 


The  Secret  Battle 

more.  He  talked  for  a  little,  as  usual,  about 
the  mud,  and  the  Boche  line,  and  so  on,  and 
then  he  said:  "What  I  told  the  Colonel  was 
perfectly  true — I  did  get  pretty  close  to  the 
wire,  and  there  wasn't  a  gap  to  be  seen — but 
that  wasn't  the  whole  of  it  .  .  .  I  couldn't  face 
it.  ...  The  truth  is,  that  show  the  other  night 
was  too  much  for  me.  ...  I  found  myself  ly- 
ing in  a  shell-hole  pretending  to  myself  that 
I  was  listening,  and  watching,  and  so  on,  but 
really  absolutely  stuck,  trying  to  make  myself 
go  on  ...  and  I  couldn't  .  .  .  I'm  finished 
as  a  scout  .  .  .  that's  all." 

Well,  it  was  all  for  the  present.  No  think- 
ing, human  C.  O.  is  going  to  run  a  man  in  for 
being  beaten  by  a  job  like  that.  It  is  a  spe- 
cialist's affair,  like  firing  a  gun.  It  is  his  busi- 
ness to  put  the  right  man  on  the  job,  and  if  he 
doesn't,  he  can't  complain. 

So  we  made  Harry  Lewis  gun  officer.  And 
that  was  the  first  stage. 


[161] 


VIII 

SOON  after  that  we  went  down  to  the 
Somme.  It  was  autumn  then,  and  all 
that  desolate  area  of  stark  brown  earth 
was  wet  and  heavy  and  stinking.  Down  the 
Ancre  valley  there  were  still  some  leaves  in 
Thiepval  Wood,  and  the  tall  trees  along  the 
river  were  green  and  beautiful  in  the  thin 
October  sun.  But  the  centre  of  battle  was 
coming  up  to  that  valley ;  in  a  month  the  green 
was  all  gone,  and  there  was  nothing  to  see  but 
the  endless  uniform  landscape  of  tumbled 
earth  and  splintered  trunks,  and  only  the  big 
shells  raising  vain  waterspouts  in  the  wide 
pools  of  the  Ancre  gave  any  brightness  to  the 
tired  eye. 

But  you  know  about  all  this.  Every  Eng- 
lishman has  a  picture  of  the  Somme  in  his 
mind,  and  I  will  not  try  to  enlarge  it.  We 
were  glad,  in  a  way,  to  go  there,  not  in  the 
expectation  of  liking  it,  but  on  the  principle 


The  Secret  Battle 

of  Henry  v.'s  speech  on  the  eve  of  St.  Crispin. 
We  saw  ourselves  in  hospitals,  or  drawing- 
rooms,  or  bars,  saying,  "Yes,  we  were  six 
months  on  the  Somme"  (as  indeed  we  were)  ; 
we  were  going  to  be  "in  the  swing."  But  it 
was  very  vile.  After  Souchez  it  was  real  war 
again,  and  many  Souchez  reputations  wilted 
there  and  died.  Yet  with  all  its  horror  and 
discomfort  and  fear  that  winter  was  more 
bearable  than  the  Gallipoli  summer.  For,  at 
the  worst,  there  was  a  little  respite,  spasms  of 
repose.  You  came  back  sometimes  to  billets, 
cold,  bare,  broken  houses,  but  still  houses, 
where  you  might  make  a  brave  blaze  of  a 
wood  fire  and  huddle  round  it  in  a  cheery 
circle  with  warm  drinks  and  a  song  or  two. 
And  sometimes  there  were  estaminets  and  kind 
French  women ;  or  you  went  far  back  to  an  old 
chateau,  perched  over  the  village,  and  there 
was  bridge  and  a  piano  and  guests  at  Head- 
quarters. Civilization  was  within  reach,  and 
sometimes  you  had  a  glimpse  of  it — and  made 
the  most  of  it. 

But  we  had  a  bad  time,  as  every  one  did. 
After  a  stiff  three  weeks  of  holding  a  nasty  bit 


The  Secret  Battle 

of  the  line,  much  digging  of  assembly 
trenches,  and  carrying  in  the  mud,  we  took  our 
part  in  a  great  battle.  I  shall  not  tell  you 
about  it  (it  is  in  the  histories)  ;  but  it  was  a 
black  day  for  the  battalion.  We  lost  400  men 
and  20  officers,  more  than  twice  the  total  Brit- 
ish casualties  at  Omdurman.  Hewett  was 
killed  and  six  other  officers,  the  Colonel  and 
twelve  more  were  wounded.  Eustace  showed 
superb  courage  with  a  hideous  wound.  Harry 
and  myself  survived.  Now  I  had  made  a  mis- 
take about  Harry.  After  that  scouting  epi- 
sode at  Souchez  I  told  myself  that  his  "nerve" 
was  gone,  that  for  a  little  anyhow  he  would  be 
no  good  in  action.  But  soon  after  we  got  to 
the  Somme  he  had  surprised  me  by  doing  a 
very  good  piece  of  work  under  fire.  We  were 
digging  a  new  "jumping-off"  line  in  No  Man's 
Land,  two  hundred  men  at  work  at  once. 
They  were  spotted,  the  Boches  dropped  some 
Minnies  about,  and  there  was  the  beginnings 
of  a  slight  stampede — you  know  the  sort  of 
thing — mythical  orders  to  "Retire"  came 
along.  All  Harry  did  was  to  get  the  men  back 
and  keep  them  together,  and  keep  them  dig- 


The  Secret  Battle 

ging:  the  officer's  job — but  he  did  very  well, 
and  to  me,  as  I  say,  surprisingly  well.  The 
truth  was,  as  I  afterwards  perceived,  that  only 
what  I  may  call  his  "scouting"  nerve  was  gone. 
It  is  a  peculiar  kind  of  super-nerve,  as  I  have 
tried  to  show,  and  losing  it  he  had  lost  a  very 
valuable  quality,  but  that  was  all  at  present. 

Or  I  may  put  it  another  way.  There  is 
a  theory  held  among  soldiers,  which  I  will 
call  the  theory  of  the  favourite  fear.  Every 
civilian  has  his  favourite  fear,  death  by  burn- 
ing or  by  drowning,  the  fear  of  falling  from 
a  great  height,  or  being  mangled  in  a  ma- 
chine— something  which  it  makes  us  shiver  to 
think  about.  Among  soldiers  such  special 
fears  are  even  more  acute,  though  less  openly 
confessed,  but  in  the  evenings  men  will  some- 
times lie  on  the  straw  in  the  smoky  barns  and 
whisper  the  things  of  which  they  are  most 
afraid. 

It  is  largely  a  matter  of  locality  and  circum- 
stance. In  Gallipoli,  where  the  Turks'  rapid 
musketry  fire  was  almost  incredibly  intense 
and  their  snipers  uncannily  accurate,  men 
would  say  that  they  hated  bullets,  but  shell- 

[165] 


The  Secret  Battle 

fire  left  them  unmoved.  The  same  men  trav- 
elled to  France  and  found  rifle  fire  practically 
extinct  but  gun-powder  increasingly  terrible, 
and  rapidly  reversed  their  opinions. 

More  often,  however,  there  has  been  some 
particular  experience  which,  out  of  a  multi- 
tude of  shocks,  has  been  able  to  make  a  lasting 
impression,  and  leave  behind  it  the  favourite 
fear. 

One  man  remembers  the  death  of  a  friend 
caught  by  the  gas  without  his  gas  mask,  and  is 
possessed  with  the  fear  that  he  may  one  day 
forget  his  own  and  perish  in  the  same  agony. 
And  such  is  the  effect  on  conduct  of  these  ob- 
sessions that  this  man  will  neglect  the  most  or- 
dinary precautions  against  other  dangers,  will 
be  reckless  under  heavy  shell-fire,  but  will  not 
move  an  inch  without  his  respirator. 

With  others  it  is  the  fear  of  being  left  to  die 
between  the  lines,  caught  on  the  wire  and  rid- 
dled by  both  sides,  the  fear  of  snipers,  of  5-9^, 
even  of  whizz-bangs.  One  man  feels  safe  in 
the  open,  but  in  the  strongest  dug-out  has  a 
horror  that  it  may  be  blown  in  upon  him. 
There  is  the  fear  of  the  empty  trench,  where, 
[i66] 


The  Secret  Battle 

like  a  child  on  the  dark  staircase,  another  man 
is  convinced  that  there  are  enemies  lying  be- 
hind the  parapet  ready  to  leap  upon  him;  and 
there  is  the  horror  of  being  killed  on  the  way 
down  from  the  line  after  a  relief. 

But  most  to  be  pitied  of  all  the  men  I  have 
known,  was  one  who  had  served  at  Gallipoli 
in  the  early  days;  few  men  then  could  have 
an  orderly  burial  in  a  recognized  ground,  but 
often  the  stretcher-bearers  buried  them  hastily 
where  they  could  in  and  about  the  lines.  This 
man's  fear  was  that  one  day  a  sniper  would  get 
him  in  the  head;  that  unskilled  companions 
would  pronounce  his  death  sentence,  and  that 
he  would  wake  up,  perhaps  within  a  few  yards 
of  his  own  trench,  and  know  that  he  was  buried 
but  not  dead. 

That  was  how  it  was  with  Harry.  The  one 
thing  he  could  not  face  at  present  was  crawl- 
ing lonely  in  the  dark  with  the  thought  of  that 
tornado  of  bullets  in  his  head.  Nothing  else 
frightened  him — now — more  than  it  fright- 
ened the  rest  of  us,  though,  God  knows,  that 
was  enough. 

So  that  he  did  quite  well  in  this  battle  in  a 


The  Secret  Battle 

sound,  undistinguished  way.  He  commanded 
a  platoon  for  the  occasion,  and  took  them 
through  the  worst  part  of  the  show  without 
exceptional  losses;  and  he  got  as  far  as  any 
of  the  regiment  got.  He  held  out  there  for 
two  days  under  very  heavy  shell-fire,  with  a 
mixed  lot  of  men  from  several  battalions,  and 
a  couple  of  strange  officers.  In  the  evening 
of  the  second  day  we  were  to  be  relieved,  and 
being  now  in  command  I  sent  him  down  with 
a  runner  to  Brigade  Headquarters  to  fix  up 
a  few  points  about  our  position  and  the  relief. 
There  was  a  terrific  barrage  to  pass,  but  both 
of  them  got  through.  When  his  business  was 
done  he  started  back  to  rejoin  the  battalion. 
By  that  time  it  was  about  eleven  o'clock  at 
night,  and  the  relief  was  just  beginning;  there 
was  no  reason  why  he  should  have  come  back 
at  all;  indeed,  the  Brigade  Major  told  him  he 
had  better  not,  had  better  wait  there  in  the 
warm  dug-out,  and  join  us  as  we  passed  down. 
Now  when  a  man  has  been  through  a  two 
days'  battle  of  this  kind,  has  had  no  sleep  and 
hardly  any  food  for  two  days,  and  finished  up 
with  a  two-mile  trudge  over  a  stony  wilder- 
[168] 


The  Secret  Battle 

ness  of  shell-holes,  through  a  vicious  barrage 
of  heavy  shells;  when  after  all  this  he  finds 
himself,  worn  and  exhausted  so  that  he  can 
hardly  stand,  but  safe  and  comfortable  in  a 
deep  dug-out  where  there  are  friendly  lights 
and  the  soothing  voices  of  calm  men ;  and  when 
he  has  the  choice  of  staying  there,  the  right 
side  of  the  barrage,  till  it  is  time  to  go  out  to 
rest,  or  of  going  back  through  that  same  bar- 
rage, staggering  into  the  same  shell-holes,  with 
the  immediate  prospect  of  doing  it  all  over 
again  with  men  to  look  after  as  well  as  himself 
— well,  the  temptation  is  almost  irresistible. 
But  Harry  did  resist  it — I  can't  tell  you  how 
— and  he  started  back.  The  barrage  was 
worse  than  ever,  all  down  the  valley  road,  and, 
apparently,  when  they  came  near  the  most 
dangerous  part,  Harry's  runner  was  hit  by  a 
big  splinter  and  blown  twenty  yards.  There 
were  no  stretchers  unoccupied  for  five  miles, 
and  it  was  evident  that  the  boy — he  was  only  a 
kid — would  die  in  a  little  time.  He  knew  it 
himself,  but  he  was  very  frightened  in  that 
hideous  valley  where  the  shells  still  fell,  and 
he  begged  Harry  not  to  leave  him.  And  so 


The  Secret  Battle 

we  came  upon  them  as  we  stumbled  down, 
thanking  our  stars  we  were  through  the  worst 
of  it,  Harry  and  the  runner  crouched  together 
in  a  shell-hole,  with  the  heart  of  the  barrage 
blazing  and  roaring  sixty  yards  off,  and  stray 
shells  all  round. 

From  a  military  or,  indeed,  a  common-sense 
point  of  view,  it  was  a  futile  performance — 
the  needless  risk  of  a  valuable  officer's  life. 

They  do  not  give  decorations  for  that  kind 
of  thing.  But  I  was  glad  he  had  stayed  with 
that  young  runner. 

And  I  only  tell  you  this  to  show  you  how 
wrong  I  was,  and  how  much  stuff  he  had  in 
him  still. 

II 

And  now  Colonel  Philpott  comes  into  the 
story.  I  wish  to  God  he  had  kept  out  of  it 
altogether.  He  was  one  of  a  class  of  officer 
with  which  our  division  was  specially  afflicted 
— at  least  we  believed  so,  if  only  for  the  credit 
of  the  British  Army;  for  if  they  were  typical 
of  the  Old  Army  I  do  not  know  how  we  came 
out  of  1914  with  as  much  honour  as  we  did. 


The  Secret  Battle 

But  I  am  happy  to  think  they  were  not.  We 
called  them  the  Old  Duds,  and  we  believed 
that  for  some  forgotten  sin  of  ours,  or  because 
of  a  certain  strong  "Temporary"  spirit  we  had, 
they  were  dumped  upon  us  by  way  of  penalty. 
We  had  peculiarly  few  Regular  officers,  and 
so  perhaps  were  inclined  to  be  extra  critical 
of  these  gentlemen.  Anyhow,  at  one  time  they 
came  in  swarms,  lazy,  stupid,  ignorant  men, 
with  many  years  of  service — retired,  reserve, 
or  what  not — but  no  discoverable  distinction 
either  in  intellect,  or  character,  or  action. 
And  when  they  had  told  us  about  Simla  and 
all  the  injustices  they  had  suffered  in  the  mat- 
ter of  promotion  or  pay,  they  ousted  some 
young  and  vigorous  Temporary  fellow  who  at 
least  knew  something  of  fighting,  if  there  were 
stray  passages  in  the  King's  Regulations  which 
he  did  not  know  by  heart;  and  in  about  a  week 
their  commands  were  discontented  and  slack. 
In  about  two  months  they  were  evacuated  sick 
(for  they  had  no  "guts,"  most  of  them),  and 
that  was  the  finest  moment  of  their  careers — 
for  them  and  for  us. 
Lt-Col.  (Tem'y)  W.  K.  Philpott  (Substan- 


The  Secret  Battle 

tive  Captain  after  God  knows  how  many  years) 
out-dudded  them  all,  though,  to  give  him  his 
due,  he  had  more  staying  power  than  most 
of  them.  He  took  over  the  battalion  when 
Colonel  Roberts  was  wounded,  and  the  con- 
trast was  painfully  acute.  I  was  his  adjutant 
for  twelve  months  in  all,  and  an  adjutant 
knows  most  things  about  his  C.  O.  He  was  a 
short,  stoutish  fellow,  with  beady  eyes  and  an 
unsuccessful  moustache,  slightly  grey,  like  a 
stubble-field  at  dawn.  He  had  all  the  exag- 
gerated respect  for  authority  and  his  superiors 
of  the  old-school  Regular,  with  none  of  its 
sincerity;  for  while  he  said  things  about  the 
Brigadier  which  no  colonel  should  say  before 
a  junior  officer,  he  positively  cringed  when 
they  met.  And  though  he  bullied  defaulters, 
and  blustered  about  his  independence  before 
juniors,  there  was  no  superior  military  goose 
to  whom  he  would  have  said  the  most  diffident 
"Bo."  He  was  lazy  beyond  words,  physically 
and  mentally,  but  to  see  him  double  out  of 
the  mess  when  a  general  visited  the  village  was 
an  education.  It  made  one  want  to  vomit.  .  .  . 
Then,  of  course,  he  believed  very  strongly 


The  Secret  Battle 

in  "The  Book,"  not  Holy  Writ,  but  all  that 
mass  of  small  red  publications  which  expound 
the  whole  art  of  being  a  soldier  in  a  style  cal- 
culated to  invest  with  mystery  the  most  ob- 
vious truths.  "It  says  it  in  The  Book"  was  his 
great  gambit — and  a  good  one  too.  Yet  he 
betrayed  the  most  astonishing  ignorance  of 
The  Book.  Any  second  lieutenant  could  have 
turned  him  inside  out  in  two  minutes  on  Field 
Service  Regulations,  and  just  where  you  ex- 
pected him  to  be  really  efficient  and  knowl- 
edgeable, the  conduct  of  trials,  and  Military 
Law,  and  so  on,  he  made  the  most  hideous 
elementary  howlers. 

But  ignorance  is  easily  forgivable  if  a  man 
will  work,  if  a  man  will  learn.  But  he  would 
neither.  He  left  everything  to  somebody  else, 
the  second-in-command,  the  adjutant,  the  or- 
derly-room. He  would  not  say  what  he 
wanted  (he  very  seldom  knew),  and  when  in 
despair  you  made  out  his  orders  for  him  he 
invariably  disagreed;  when  he  disagreed  he 
was  as  obstinate  as  a  mule,  without  being  so 
clever.  When  he  did  agree  it  took  half  an 
hour  to  explain  the  simplest  arrangement.  If 


The  Secret  Battle 

you  asked  him  to  sign  some  correspondence 
for  the  Brigade,  he  was  too  lazy  and  told  you 
to  sign  it  yourself;  and  when  you  did  that  he 
apologized  to  the  Brigade  for  the  irregulari- 
ties of  his  adjutant — "a  Temporary  fellow, 
you  know."  For  he  had  an  ill-concealed  con- 
tempt for  all  Temporaries ;  and  that  was  per- 
haps one  reason  why  we  disliked  him  so  much. 
He  would  not  believe  that  a  young  officer,  who 
had  not  spent  twenty  years  drinking  in  mess- 
rooms,  could  have  any  military  value  what- 
ever. Moreover,  it  annoyed  him  intensely 
(and  here  he  had  my  sympathy)  to  see  such 
men  enjoying  the  same  pay  or  rank  as  he  had 
enjoyed  during  the  almost  apocryphal  period 
of  his  captaincy.  And  having  himself  learned 
practically  nothing  during  that  long  lotus- 
time,  it  was  inconceivable  to  him  that  any  man, 
however  vigorous  or  intelligent,  could  have 
learned  anything  in  two  years  of  war. 

Now  let  me  repeat  that  I  do  not  believe  him 
to  be  typical  of  the  Old  Army,  I  know  he  was 
not  (thank  God)  ;  but  this  is  a  history  of  what 
happened  to  Harry,  and  Colonel  Philpott  was 
one  of  the  things  which  happened — very 


The  Secret  Battle 

forcibly.  So  I  give  him  to  you  as  we  found 
him,  and  since  he  may  be  alive  I  may  say  that 
his  name  is  fictitious,  though  there  are,  un- 
happily, so  many  of  him  alive  that  I  have  no 
fears  that  he  will  recognize  himself.  He 
would  not  be  the  same  man  if  he  did. 

We  went  out  for  a  fortnight's  rest  after  that 
battle,  and  Harry  had  trouble  with  him  almost 
at  once.  He  had  amused  and  irritated  Harry 
from  the  first — the  Old  Duds  always  did — 
for  his  respect  for  authority  was  very  civilian 
and  youthful  in  character;  he  took  a  man  for 
what  he  was,  and  if  he  decided  he  was  good 
stood  by  him  loyally  for  ever  after;  if  he  did 
not  he  was  severe,  not  to  say  intolerant,  and 
regrettably  lacking  in  that  veneration  for  the 
old  and  incapable  which  is  the  soul  of  military 
discipline. 

Philpott's  arrogance  on  the  subject  of  Tem- 
poraries annoyed  him  intensely;  it  annoyed 
us  all,  and  this  I  think  it  was  that  made  him 
say  a  very  unfortunate  thing.  He  was  up 
before  the  C.  O.  with  some  trifling  request  or 
other  (I  forget  what),  and  somehow  the  ques- 
tion of  his  seniority  and  service  came  up.  In- 


The  Secret  Battle 

cidentally,  Harry  remarked,  quite  mildly,  that 
he  believed  he  was  nearly  due  for  promotion. 
Colonel  Philpott  gave  as  close  an  imitation  of 
a  lively  man  as  I  ever  saw  him  achieve;  he 
nearly  had  a  fit.  I  forget  all  he  said — he 
thundered  for  a  long  time,  banging  his  fist  on 
the  King's  Regulations,  and  knocking  every- 
thing off  the  rickety  table — but  this  was  the 
climax: 

"Promotion,  by  God!  and  how  old  are  you, 
young  man?  and  how  much  service  have  you 
seen?  Let  me  tell  you  this,  Master  Penrose, 
when  I  was  your  age  I  hadn't  begun  to  think 
about  promotion,  and  I  did  fifteen  years  as  a 
captain — fifteen  solid  years!" 

"And  I  don't  wonder,"  said  Harry. 

It  was  very  unfortunate. 

Ill 

When  we  went  back  to  the  line,  Harry  was 
detailed  for  many  working-parties;  and  some 
of  them,  particularly  the  first,  were  very  nasty. 
The  days  of  comfortable  walking  in  communi- 
cation trenches  were  over.  We  were  in  cap- 
tured ground  churned  up  by  our  own  fire,  and 


The  Secret  Battle 

all  communication  with  the  front  was  over  the 
open,  over  the  shell-holes.  Harry  was  told 
off  to  take  a  ration-party,  carrying  rations  up 
to  the  battalion  in  the  line,  a  hundred  men. 
These  were  bad  jobs  to  do.  It  meant  three- 
quarters  of  a  mile  along  an  uphill  road,  heav- 
ily shelled;  then  there  was  a  mile  over  the 
shell-hole  country,  where  there  were  no  land- 
marks or  duckboards,  or  anything  to  guide 
you.  For  a  single  man  in  daylight,  with  a 
map,  navigation  was  difficult  enough  in  this 
uniform  wilderness  until  you  have  been  over 
it  a  time  or  two ;  to  go  over  it  for  the  first  time, 
in  the  dark,  with  a  hundred  men  carrying 
heavy  loads,  was  the  kind  of  thing  that  makes 
men  transfer  to  the  Flying  Corps.  Harry  got 
past  the  road  with  the  loss  of  three  men  only; 
there,  at  any  rate,  you  went  straight  ahead, 
however  slowly.  But  when  he  left  the  road, 
his  real  troubles  began.  It  was  pitch  dark  and 
drizzling,  and  the  way  was  still  uphill.  With 
those  unhappy  carrying-parties,  where  three- 
fourths  of  the  men  carried  two  heavy  sacks  of 
bread  and  tinned  meat  and  other  food,  and  the 
rest  two  petrol  tins  of  water,  or  a  jar  of  rum, 

[177] 


The  Secret  Battle 

or  rifle  oil,  or  whale  oil,  besides  a  rifle  and  a 
bandolier,  and  two  respirators,  and  a  great- 
coat— you  must  move  with  exquisite  slowness, 
or  you  will  lose  your  whole  party  in  a  hun- 
dred yards.  And  even  when  you  are  just  put- 
ting one  foot  in  front  of  another,  moving  so 
slowly  that  it  maddens  you,  there  are  halts  and 
hitches  every  few  yards:  a  man  misses  his  foot- 
ing and  slides  down  into  a  crater  with  his  aw- 
ful load ;  the  hole  is  full  of  foul  green  water, 
and  he  must  be  hauled  out  quickly  lest  he 
drown.  Halfway  down  the  line  a  man  halts 
to  ease  his  load,  or  shift  his  rifle,  or  scratch  his 
nose ;  when  he  goes  on  he  can  see  no  one  ahead 
of  him,  and  the  cry  "Not  in  touch"  comes 
sullenly  up  to  the  front.  Or  you  cross  the 
path  of  another  party,  burdened  as  yours.  In 
the  dark,  or  against  the  flaring  skyline,  they 
look  like  yours,  bent,  murky  shapes  with  bumps 
upon  them,  and  some  of  your  men  trail  off 
with  the  other  party.  And  though  you  pity 
your  men  more  than  yourself,  it  is  difficult 
sometimes  to  be  gentle  with  them,  difficult  not 
to  yield  to  the  intense  exasperation  of  it  all, 
and  curse  foolishly.  ... 


The  Secret  Battle 

But  Harry  was  good  with  his  men,  and  they 
stumbled  on,  slipping,  muttering,  with  a  dull 
ache  at  the  shoulders  and  a  dogged  rage  in 
their  hearts.  He  was  trying  to  steer  by  the 
compass,  and  he  was  aiming  for  a  point  given 
him  on  the  map,  the  rendezvous  for  the  party 
he  was  to  meet.  This  point  was  the  junction  of 
three  trenches,  but  as  all  trenches  thereabouts 
had  been  blotted  out  as  to  be  almost  indistin- 
guishable from  casual  shell-holes,  it  was  not 
so  good  a  rendezvous  as  it  had  seemed  to  the 
Brigade.  However,  Harry  managed  to  find 
it,  or  believed  that  he  had  found  it — for  in  that 
murk  and  blackness  nothing  was  certain;  if 
he  had  found  it,  the  other  party  had  not,  for 
there  was  no  one  there.  They  might  be  late, 
they  might  be  lost,  they  might  be  waiting  else- 
where. So  Harry  sent  out  a  scout  or  two  and 
waited,  while  the  men  lay  down  in  the  muddy 
ruins  of  the  trench  and  dozed  unhappily. 
And  while  they  waited,  the  Boche,  who  had 
been  flinging  big  shells  about  at  random  since 
dusk,  took  it  into  his  head  to  plaster  these  old 
trenches  with  5  9*8.  Harry  ran,  or  floundered 
along  the  line,  telling  the  men  to  lie  close 

[179] 


The  Secret  Battle 

where  they  were.  There  was  indeed  nothing 
else  to  do,  but  it  gave  the  men  confidence,  and 
none  of  them  melted  away.  As  he  ran,  a  big 
one  burst  very  near  and  knocked  him  flat,  but 
he  was  untouched ;  it  is  marvellous  how  local 
the  effect  of  H.  E.  can  be.  For  about  ten 
minutes  they  had  a  bad  time,  and  then  it 
ceased,  suddenly. 

And  now  was  one  of  those  crucial  moments 
which  distinguish  a  good  officer  from  a  bad, 
or  even  an  ordinary  officer.  It  was  easy  to 
say,  "Here  I  am  at  the  rendezvous"  (by  this 
time  Harry  had  got  his  bearings  a  little  by  the 
lights,  and  knew  he  was  in  the  right  spot) 
"with  these  something  rations;  the  men  are 
done  and  a  bit  shaken;  so  am  I;  the  other 
people  haven't  turned  up;  if  they  want  their 
rations  they  can  damned  well  come  here  and 
get  them;  IVe  done  my  part,  and  Fm  going 
home."  But  a  real  good  officer,  with  a  con- 
science and  an  imagination,  would  say:  "Yes 
— but  IVe  been  sent  up  here  to  get  these  ra- 
tions to  the  men  in  the  line ;  my  men  will  have 
a  rest  tomorrow,  and  some  sleep,  and  some 
good  food ;  the  men  in  the  line  now  will  still 
[180] 


The  Secret  Battle 

be  in  the  line,  with  no  sleep,  and  little  rest, 
and  if  these  rations  are  left  here  in  the  mud 
and  not  found  before  dawn,  they'll  have  no 
food  either;  and  whatever  other  people  may 
do  or  not  do,  it's  up  to  me  to  get  these  rations 
up  there  somehow,  if  we  have  to  walk  all  night 
and  carry  them  right  up  to  the  Front  Line 
ourselves,  and  I'm  not  going  home  till  I've 
done  it."  I  don't  know,  but  I  think  that  that's 
the  sort  of  thing  Harry  said  to  himself;  and 
anyhow  after  the  row  with  Philpott  he  was 
particularly  anxious  to  make  good.  So  he 
got  his  men  out  and  told  them  about  it  all, 
and  they  floundered  on.  It  was  raining  hard 
now,  with  a  bitter  wind  when  they  passed  the 
crest  of  the  hill.  Harry  had  a  vague  idea  of 
the  direction  of  the  line  so  long  as  they  were 
on  the  slope;  but  on  the  flat,  when  they  had 
dodged  round  a  few  hundred  shell-holes,  halt- 
ing and  going  on  and  halting  again,  all  sense 
of  direction  departed,  and  very  soon  they  were 
hopelessly  lost.  The  flares  were  no  good,  for 
the  line  curved,  and  there  seemed  to  be  lights 
all  around,  going  up  mistily  through  the  rain 
in  a  wide  circle.  Once  you  were  properly 

[181] 


The  Secret  Battle 

lost  the  compass  was  useless,  for  you  might 
be  in  the  Boche  lines,  you  might  be  anywhere. 
...  At  such  moments  a  kind  of  mad,  des- 
perate self-pity,  born  of  misery  and  weariness 
and  rage,  takes  hold  of  the  infantryman,  and 
if  he  carries  a  load,  he  is  truly  ready  to  fall 
down  and  sleep  where  he  is — or  die.  And  in 
the  wretched  youth  in  charge  there  is  a  sense 
of  impotence  and  responsibility  that  makes  his 
stomach  sink  within  him.  Some  of  the  men 
began  to  growl  a  little,  but  Harry  held  on 
despairingly.  And  then  by  God's  grace  they 
ran  into  another  party,  a  N.  C.  O.  and  a  few 
men ;  these  were  the  party — or  some  of  them — 
that  should  have  met  them  at  the  rendezvous ; 
they  too  had  been  lost  and  were  now  wander- 
ing back  to  the  line.  Well,  Harry  handed 
over  the  rations  and  turned  home,  well 
pleased  with  himself.  He  was  too  sick  of  the 
whole  affair,  and  it  was  too  dark  and  beastly 
to  think  of  getting  a  receipt.  It  was  a  pity; 
for  while  he  trudged  home,  the  N.  C.  O.,  as 
we  afterwards  heard,  was  making  a  mess  of  the 
whole  business.  Whether  he  had  not  enough 
men,  or  perhaps  lost  them,  or  miscalculated 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  amount  of  rations  or  what,  is  not  clear,  but 
half  of  all  that  precious  food  was  found  lying 
in  the  mud  at  noon  the  next  day  when  it  was 
too  late,  and  half  the  battalion  in  the  line  went 
very  short.  Then  the  Colonel  rang  up  Phil- 
pott,  and  complained  bitterly  about  the  con- 
duct of  the  officer  in  charge  of  our  ration- 
party.  Philpott  sent  for  Harry  and  accused 
him  hotly  of  dumping  the  rations  carelessly 
anywhere,  of  not  finishing  his  job. 

Harry  gave  his  account  of  the  affair  quite 
simply,  without  enlarging  on  the  bad  time  he 
had  had,  though  that  was  clear  enough  to  a 
man  with  any  knowledge.  But  he  could  not 
show  a  receipt.  Philpott  was  the  kind  of  man 
who  valued  receipts  more  than  righteousness. 
He  refused  to  believe  Harry's  straightforward 
tale,  cursed  him  for  a  lazy  swine,  and  sent  him 
to  apologize  to  the  Colonel  of  the  Blanks. 
That  officer  did  listen  to  Harry's  story,  be- 
lieved it,  and  apologized  to  him.  Harry  was 
a  little  soothed,  but  from  that  day  I  know  there 
was  a  great  bitterness  in  his  heart.  For  he 
had  done  a  difficult  job  very  well,  and  had 
come  back  justly  proud  of  himself  and  his  men. 


The  Secret  Battle 

And  to  have  the  work  wasted  by  a  bungling 
N.  C.  O.,  and  his  word  doubted  by  a  Phil- 
pott.  .  .  . 

And  that  I  may  call  the  beginning  of  the 
second  stage. 


IX 

FOR  after  that  Harry  began  to  be  in  a 
bad  way  again.  That  shelling  in  the 
night  and  the  near  concussion  of  the 
shell  that  knocked  him  over  had  been  one  of 
those  capital  shocks  of  which  I  have  spoken. 
From  that  time  on,  shell-fire  in  the  open  be- 
came a  special  terror,  a  new  favourite  fear; 
afterwards  he  told  me  so.  And  all  that  win- 
ter we  had  shell-fire  in  the  open — even  the 
"lines"  were  not  trenches,  only  a  string  of  scat- 
tered shell-holes  garrisoned  by  a  few  men. 
Everywhere,  night  and  day,  you  had  that 
naked  feeling. 

Yet  in  France,  at  the  worst,  given  proper 
rest  and  variety,  with  a  chance  to  nurse  his 
courage  and  soothe  his  nerves,  a  resolute  man 
could  struggle  on  a  long  time  after  he  began 
to  crack.  But  Harry  had  no  rest,  no  chance. 
The  affaire  Philpott  was  having  a  rich  har- 
vest. For  about  three  weeks  in  the  February 


The  Secret  Battle 

of  that  awful  winter  the  battalion  was  em- 
ployed solely  on  working-parties,  all  sorts  of 
them,  digging,  carrying,  behind  the  line,  in 
the  line,  soft  jobs,  terrible  jobs.  Now  as  ad- 
jutant I  used  to  take  particular  care  that  the 
safe  jobs  in  the  rear  should  be  fairly  shared 
among  the  companies  in  a  rough  rotation,  2nd 
that  no  officers  or  men  should  have  too  many 
of  the  bad  ones — the  night  carrying-parties  to 
the  front  line.  But  about  now  Colonel  Phil- 
pott  began  to  exert  himself  about  these  parties ; 
he  actually  issued  orders  about  the  arrange- 
ments, and  whether  by  accident  or  design,  his 
orders  had  this  particular  effect,  that  Harry 
took  about  three  times  as  many  of  the  danger- 
ous parties  as  anybody  else.  We  were  in  a 
country  of  rolling  down  with  long  trough-like 
valleys  or  ravines  between.  To  get  to  the  front 
line  you  had  to  cross  two  of  these  valleys,  and 
in  each  of  them  the  Boche  put  a  terrific  bar- 
rage all  night,  and  every  night.  The  second 
one — the  Valley  of  Death — was  about  as  near 
to  Inferno  as  I  wish  to  see,  for  it  was  enfiladed 
from  both  ends,  and  you  had  shell-fire  from 
three  directions.  Well,  for  three  weeks 
[i  86] 


The  Secret  Battle 

Harry  took  a  party  through  this  valley  four 
or  five  nights  a  week.  .  .  .  Each  party  meant 
a  double  passage  through  two  corners  of  hell, 
with  a  string  of  weary  men  to  keep  together, 
and  encourage  and  command,  with  all  that 
maddening  accumulation  of  difficulties  I  have 
tried  already  to  describe  .  .  .  and  at  the  end 
of  that  winter,  after  all  he  had  done,  it  was  too 
much.  I  protested  to  the  Colonel,  but  it  was 
no  good.  "Master  Penrose  can  go  on  with 
these  parties,"  he  said,  "till  he  learns  how  to 
do  them  properly." 

After  ten  days  of  this  Harry  began  to  be 
afraid  of  himself;  or,  as  he  put  it,  "I  don't 
know  if  I  can  stand  much  more  of  this."  All 
his  old  distrust  of  himself,  which  lately  I  think 
he  had  very  successfully  kept  away,  came 
creeping  back.  But  he  made  no  complaint; 
he  did  not  ask  me  to  intercede  with  Philpott. 
The  more  he  hated  and  feared  these  parties, 
the  worse  he  felt,  the  keener  became  his  deter- 
mination to  stick  it  out,  to  beat  Philpott  at  his 
own  game.  Or  so  I  imagine.  For  by  the 
third  week  there  was  no  doubt;  what  is  called 
his  "nerve"  was  clean  gone;  or,  as  he  put  it 


The  Secret  Battle 

to  me  in  the  soldier's  tongue,  "IVe  got  com- 
plete wind-up."  He  would  have  given  any- 
thing— except  his  pride — to  have  escaped  one 
of  those  parties;  he  thought  about  them  all 
day.  I  did  manage,  in  sheer  defiance  of  Phil- 
pott,  to  take  him  off  one  of  them;  but  it  was 
only  sheer  dogged  will-power,  and  perhaps 
the  knowledge  that  we  were  to  be  relieved  the 
following  week,  which  carried  him  through 
to  the  end  of  it.  ... 

If  we  had  not  gone  out  I  don't  know  what 
would  have  happened.  But  I  can  guess. 

II 

And  so  Philpott  finally  broke  his  nerve. 
But  he  was  still  keen  and  resolute  to  go  on,  in 
spite  of  the  bitterness  in  his  heart.  Philpott 
— and  other  things — had  still  to  break  his 
spirit.  And  the  "other  things"  were  many 
that  winter.  It  was  a  long,  cold,  comfortless 
winter.  Billets  became  more  and  more  broken 
and  windowless  and  lousy;  firewood  vanished, 
and  there  was  little  coal.  On  the  high  slopes 
there  was  a  bitter  wind,  and  men  went  sick  in 
hundreds — pneumonia,  fever,  frost-bite.  All 


The  Secret  Battle 

dug-outs  were  damp  and  chilling  and  greasy 
with  mud,  or  full  of  the  acrid  wood-smoke  that 
tortured  the  eyes.  There  were  night  advances 
in  the  snow,  where  lightly  wounded  men  per- 
ished of  exposure  before  dawn.  For  a  fort- 
night we  lived  in  tents  on  a  hill-top  covered 
with  snow. 

And  one  day  Harry  discovered  he  was 
lousy.  .  .  . 

Then,  socially,  though  it  seems  a  strange 
thing  to  say,  these  were  dull  days  for  Harry. 
Few  people  realize  how  much  an  infantry- 
man's life  is  lightened  if  he  has  companions 
of  his  own  kind — not  necessarily  of  the  same 
class,  though  it  usually  comes  to  that — but  of 
the  same  tastes  and  education  and  experience 
— men  who  make  the  same  kind  of  jokes.  In 
the  line  it  matters  little,  a  man  is  a  man,  as 
the  Press  will  tell  you.  But  in  the  evenings, 
out  at  rest,  it  was  good  and  cheering  to  sit  with 
the  Old  Crowd  and  exchange  old  stories  of 
Gallipoli  and  Oxford  and  London;  even  to 
argue  with  Eustace  about  the  Public  Schools ; 
to  be  with  men  who  liked  the  same  songs,  the 
same  tunes  on  the  gramophone,  who  did  not 


The  Secret  Battle 

always  ask  for  uMy  Dixie  Bird"  or  "The 
Green  Woman"  waltz.  .  .  .  And  now  there 
was  none  of  the  Old  Crowd  left,  only  Harry 
and  myself,  Harry  with  a  company  now,  and 
myself  very  busy  at  Headquarters.  And 
Harry's  company  were  very  dull  men,  pro- 
moted N.  C.  O.'s  mostly,  good  fellows  all — 
very  good  in  the  line — but  they  were  not  the 
Old  Crowd.  Now,  instead  of  those  great  eve- 
nings we  used  to  have,  with  the  white  wine, 
and  the  music,  and  old  George  dancing,  eve- 
nings that  have  come  down  in  the  history  of 
the  battalion  as  our  battles  have  done,  evenings 
that  kept  the  spirit  strong  in  the  blackest  times 
— there  were  morose  men  with  wooden  faces 
sitting  silently  over  some  whisky  and  Battalion 
Orders.  .  .  . 

And  Hewett  was  dead,  the  laughing,  lovable 
Hewett.  That  was  the  black  heart  of  it. 
When  a  man  becomes  part  of  the  great  ma- 
chine, he  is  generally  supposed — I  know  not 
why — to  surrender  with  his  body  his  soul  and 
his  affections  and  all  his  human  tendernesses. 
But  it  is  not  so. 

We  never  talked  of  Hewett  very  much. 
[190] 


The  Secret  Battle 

Only  there  was  for  ever  a  great  gap.  And 
some  times,  when  we  tried  to  be  cheerful  in 
the  evenings,  as  in  the  old  times,  and  were  not, 
we  said  to  each  other — Harry  and  I — "I  wish 
to  God  that  he  was  here."  Yet  for  long  pe- 
riods I  forgot  Hewett.  Harry  never  forgot 
him. 

Then  there  was  something  about  which  I 
may  be  wrong,  for  Harry  never  mentioned  it, 
and  I  am  only  guessing  from  my  own  opinion. 
In  two  years  of  war  he  had  won  no  kind  of 
medal  or  distinction — except  a  "mention"  in 
dispatches,  which  is  about  as  satisfying  as  a 
caraway-seed  to  a  starving  man.  In  Gallip- 
oli  he  had  done  things  which  in  France  in 
modern  times  would  have  earned  an  easy  deco- 
ration. But  they  were  scarce  in  those  days; 
and  in  France  he  had  done  much  dogged  and 
difficult  work,  and  a  few  very  courageous,  but 
in  a  military  sense  perfectly  useless  things, 
nothing  dramatic,  nothing  to  catch  the  eye 
of  the  Brigade.  I  don't  know  whether  he 
minded  much,  but  I  felt  it  myself  very  keenly; 
for  I  knew  that  he  had  started  with  ambitions; 
and  here  were  fellows  with  not  half  his  service, 

[191] 


The  Secret  Battle 

or  courage,  or  capacity,  just  ordinary  men 
with  luck,  ablaze  with  ribbon.  .  .  .  Any  one 
who  says  he  cares  nothing  about  medals  is  a 
hypocrite,  though  most  of  us  care  very  little. 
But  if  you  believe  you  have  done  well,  and  not 
only  is  there  nothing  to  show  for  it,  but  noth- 
ing to  show  that  other  people  believe  it  ... 
you  can't  help  caring. 

And  then,  on  top  of  it,  when  you  have  a  gen- 
uine sense  of  bitter  injustice,  when  you  know 
that  your  own  most  modest  estimate  of  your- 
self is  exalted  compared  with  the  estimate  of 
the  man  who  commands  you — you  begin  to 
have  black  moods.  .  .  . 

Ill 

Harry  had  black  moods.  All  these  tor- 
ments accumulated  and  broke  his  spirit.  He 
lost  his  keenness,  his  cheerfulness,  and  his 
health.  Once  a  man  starts  on  that  path,  his 
past  history  finds  him  out,  like  an  old  wound. 
Some  men  take  to  drink  and  are  disgraced. 
In  Harry's  case  it  was  Gallipoli.  No  man 
who  had  a  bad  time  in  that  place  ever  "got 
over"  it  in  body  or  soul.  And  when  France 
[192] 


The  Secret  Battle 

or  some  other  campaign  began  to  work  upon 
them,  it  was  seen  that  there  was  something 
missing  in  their  resisting  power;  they  broke 
out  with  old  diseases  and  old  fears  .  .  .  the 
legacies  of  Gallipoli. 

Harry  grew  pale,  and  nervous,  and  hunted 
to  look  at;  and  he  had  a  touch  of  dysentery. 
But  the  worst  of  the  poison  was  in  his  mind 
and  heart.  For  a  long  time,  as  I  have  said, 
since  he  felt  the  beginning  of  those  old  doubts, 
and  saw  himself  starting  downhill,  he  had 
striven  anxiously  to  keep  his  name  high  in 
men's  opinion;  for  all  liked  him  and  believed 
in  him.  He  had  been  ready  for  anything,  and 
done  his  work  with  a  conscientious  pride. 
But  now  this  bitterness  was  on  him,  he  seemed 
to  have  ceased  to  care  what  happened  or  what 
men  thought  of  him.  He  had  unreasonable 
fits  of  temper;  he  became  distrustful  and  cyn- 
ical. I  thought  then,  sometimes,  of  the  day 
when  he  had  looked  at  Troy  and  wanted  to  be 
like  Achilles.  It  was  painful  to  me  to  hear 
him  talking  as  Eustace  used  to  talk,  suspicious, 
intolerant,  incredulous.  ...  I  thought  how 
Harry  had  once  hated  that  kind  of  talk,  and  it 


The  Secret  Battle 

was  most  significant  of  the  change  that  had 
come  over  the  good  companion  I  had  known. 
Yet  sometimes,  when  the  sun  shone,  and  once 
when  we  rode  back  into  Albert  and  dined 
quietly  alone,  that  mask  of  bitterness  fell 
away;  there  were  flashes  of  the  old  cheerful 
Harry,  and  I  had  hopes.  I  hoped  Philpott 
would  be  killed.  .  .  . 

IV 

But  he  survived,  for  he  was  very  careful. 
And  though,  as  I  have  said,  he  stuck  it  for  a 
long  time,  he  was  by  no  means  the  gallant  fire- 
eater  you  would  have  imagined  from  his  treat- 
ment of  defaulters.  Once  round  the  line  just 
before  dawn  was  enough  for  him  in  that  sort 
of  country.  "Things  are  quiet  then,  and  you 
can  see  what's  going  on."  He  liked  it  best 
when  "things  were  quiet."  So  did  all  of  us, 
and  I  don't  blame  him  for  that. 

But  that  winter  there  was  a  thick  crop  of 
S.  I.  W.'s.  S.  I.  W.  is  the  short  title  for  a  man 
who  has  been  evacuated  with  self-inflicted 
wounds — shot  himself  in  the  foot,  or  held  a 
finger  over  the  muzzle  of  his  rifle,  or  dropped 

[194] 


The  Secret  Battle 

a  great  boulder  on  his  foot — done  himself  any 
reckless  injury  to  escape  from  the  misery  of  it 
all.  It  was  always  a  marvel  to  me  that  any 
man  who  could  find  courage  to  do  such  things 
could  not  find  courage  to  go  on;  I  suppose 
they  felt  it  would  bring  them  the  certainty  of 
a  little  respite,  and  beyond  that  they  did  not 
care,  for  it  was  the  uncertainty  of  their  life 
that  had  broken  them.  You  could  not  help 
being  sorry  for  these  men,  even  though  you 
despised  them.  It  made  you  sick  to  think 
that  any  man  who  had  come  voluntarily  to 
fight  for  his  country  could  be  brought  so  low, 
that  humanity  could  be  so  degraded  exactly 
where  it  was  being  so  ennobled. 

But  Philpott  had  no  such  qualms.  He  was 
ruthless,  and  necessarily  so ;  but,  beyond  that, 
he  was  brutal,  he  bullied.  When  they  came 
before  him,  healed  of  their  wounds,  haggard, 
miserable  wisps  of  men,  he  kept  them  stand- 
ing there  while  he  told  them  at  length  exactly 
how  low  they  had  sunk  (they  knew  that  well 
enough,  poor  devils),  and  flung  at  them  a  rich 
vocabulary  of  abuse — words  of  cowardice  and 
dishonour,  which  were  strictly  accurate  but 


The  Secret  Battle 

highly  unnecessary.  For  these  men  were  go- 
ing back  to  duty  now;  they  had  done  their 
punishment — though  the  worst  of  it  was  still 
to  come ;  all  they  needed  was  a  few  quiet  words 
of  encouragement  from  a  strong  man  to  a 
weaker,  a  little  human  sympathy,  and  that 
appeal  to  a  man's  honour  which  so  seldom  fails 
if  it  is  rightly  made. 

Well,  this  did  not  surprise  me  in  Philpott; 
he  had  no  surprises  for  me  by  now.  What  did 
surprise  me  was  Harry's  intolerant,  even  cruel, 
comments  on  the  cases  of  the  S.  I.  W.'s.  He 
had  always  had  a  real  sympathy  with  the  men, 
he  knew  the  strange  workings  of  their  minds, 
and  all  the  wretchedness  of  their  lives;  he  un- 
derstood them.  And  yet  here  he  was,  as  scorn- 
ful, as  Prussian,  on  the  subject  of  S.  I.  W.'s 
as  even  Philpott.  It  was  long  before  I  un- 
derstood this — I  don't  know  that  I  ever  did. 
But  I  thought  it  was  this:  that  in  these  wrecks 
of  men  he  recognized  something  of  his  own 
sufferings ;  and  recognizing  the  disease  he  was 
the  more  appalled  by  the  remedy  they  took. 
The  kind  of  thing  that  had  led  them  to  it  was 
the  kind  of  thing  he  had  been  through,  was  go- 


The  Secret  Battle 

ing  through.  There  the  connection  ceased. 
There  was  no  such  way  out  for  him.  But 
though  it  ceased,  the  connection  was  so  close 
that  it  was  degrading.  And  this  scorn  and 
anger  was  a  kind  of  instinctive  self-defence — 
put  on  to  assure  himself,  to  assure  the  world, 
that  there  was  no  connection — none  at  all.  .  .  . 
But  I  don't  know. 


At  the  end  of  February  I  was  wounded  and 
went  home.  Without  any  conceit,  without  ex- 
aggerating our  friendship,  I  may  say  that  this 
was  the  final  blow  for  Harry.  I  was  the  last 
of  the  Old  Crowd;  I  was  the  one  man  who 
knew  the  truth  of  things  as  between  him  and 
Philpott.  .  .  .  And  I  went. 

I  was  hit  by  a  big  shell  at  Whizz-Bang  Cor- 
ner, and  Harry  saw  me  on  the  stretcher  as  we 
came  past  D  Company  on  the  Bapaume  Road. 
He  walked  with  me  as  far  as  the  cookers,  and 
was  full  of  concern  for  my  wound,  which  was 
pretty  painful  just  then.  But  he  bucked  me 
up  and  talked  gaily  of  the  good  things  I  was 
going  to.  And  he  said  nothing  of  himself. 


The  Secret  Battle 

But  when  he  left  me  there  was  a  look  about 
him — what  is  the  word? — wistful — it  is  the 
only  one,  like  a  dog  left  behind. 

While  I  was  still  in  hospital  I  had  two  let- 
ters from  the  battalion.  The  first  was  from 
Harry,  a  long  wail  about  Philpott  and  the 
dulness  of  everybody  now  that  the  Old  Crowd 
were  extinct,  though  he  seemed  to  have  made 
good  friends  of  some  of  the  dull  ones.  At  the 
end  of  that  endless  winter,  when  it  seemed  as 
if  the  spring  would  never  come,  they  had 
pulled  out  of  the  line  and  "trekked"  up  north, 
so  that  there  had  been  little  fighting.  They 
were  now  in  shell-holes  across  the  high  ridge 
in  front  of  Arras,  preparing  for  an  advance. 

The  other  letter  was  from  old  Knight,  the 
Quartermaster,  dated  two  months  after  I  left. 

I  will  give  you  an  extract: 

"Probably  by  now  you  will  have  seen  or 
heard  from  young  Penrose.  He  was  hit  on 
the  ibth,  a  nasty  wound  in  the  chest  from  a 
splinter.  .  .  .  It  was  rather  funny — not  funny, 
but  you  know  what  I  mean — how  he  got  it. 


The  Secret  Battle 

I  was  there  myself  though  I  didn't  see  it. 
I  had  been  up  to  H.  Q.  to  see  about  the  rations, 
and  there  were  a  lot  of  us,  Johnson  (he  is  now 
Adj.  in  your  place)  and  Fellowesf  and  so  on, 
standing  outside  H.  Q.  (which  is  on  a  hill — 
what  you  people  call  a  forward  slope,  I  be- 
lieve),  and  watching  our  guns  bombarding 
the  village.  It  was  a  remarkable  sight,  etc., 
etc.  (a  long  digression).  .  .  .  Then  the  Boche 
started  shelling  our  hill;  he  dropped  them  in 
pairs,  first  of  all  at  the  other  end  of  the  hill, 
about  500  yards  off,  and  then  nearer  and 
nearer,  about  20  yards  at  a  time  .  .  .  the  line 
they  were  on  was  pretty  near  to  us,  so  we 
thought  the  dug-out  would  be  a  good  place  to 
go  to.  .  .  .  Penrose  was  just  starting  to  go 
back  to  his  company  when  this  began,  and  as 
we  went  down  somebody  told  him  he'd  better 
wait  a  bit.  But  he  said  'No,  he  wanted  to  get 
back'  I  was  the  last  down,  and  as  I  disap- 
peared (pretty  hurriedly)  I  told  him  not  to 
be  a  fool.  But  all  he  said  was,  'This  is  noth- 
ing, old  bird — you  wait  till  you  live  up  here; 
I'm  going  on.'  The  next  thing  we  heard  was 
the  hell  of  an  explosion  on  top.  We  ran  up 

[199] 


The  Secret  Battle 

afterwards,  and  there  he  was,  about  thirty 
yards  off.  .  .  .  The  funny  thing  is  that  I  un- 
derstood he  rather  had  the  wind-up  just  now, 
and  was  anything  but  reckless  .  .  .  in  fact, 
some  one  said  he  had  the  Dug-out  Disease. 
.  .  .  Otherwise,  you'd  have  said  he  wanted  to 
be  killed.  I  don't  know  why  he  wasn't,  asking 
for  it  like  that.  .  .  .  Well,  thank  God  I'm  a 
Q.  M.,  etc.,  etc." 

I  read  it  all  very  carefully,  and  wondered. 
"You'd  have  said  he  wanted  to  be  killed."  I 
wondered  about  that  very  much. 

And  there  was  a  postscript  which  interested 
me: 

"By  the  way,  I  hear  Burnetts  got  the  M.  C. 
— for  Salvage,  I  believe/" 


[200] 


I  WAS  six  months  in  that  hospital,  and  I 
did  not  see  Harry  for  seven.  For  I  was 
at  Blackpool,  and  he  at  Lady  Radmore's 
in  Kensington.  His  was  quicker  business 
than  mine;  and  when  I  had  finished  with  the 
hospitals  and  the  homes  and  came  to  London 
for  a  three  weeks'  laze,  he  was  back  at  the 
Depot.  Then  he  got  seven  days'  leave  for 
some  mysterious  reason  (I  think  there  was  a 
draft  leaving  shortly,  and  everybody  had  some 
leave),  and  I  dined  twice  with  him  at  home. 
They  had  a  little  house  in  Chelsea,  very  taste- 
fully furnished  by  Mrs.  Penrose,  whom  I  now 
saw  for  the  first  time.  But  I  saw  more  of  her 
that  evening  than  I  did  of  Harry,  who  was 
hopelessly  entangled  with  two  or  three  "in- 
laws."  She  was  a  dark,  gentle  little  person, 
with  brown,  and  rather  sorrowful,  eyes. 
When  I  first  saw  her  I  thought,  "She  was  never 
meant  to  be  a  soldier's  wife,"  but  after  we  had 

[201] 


The  Secret  Battle 

talked  a  little,  I  added,  "But  she  is  a  good  one." 
She  was  clearly  very  much  in  love  with  Harry, 
and  delighted  to  meet  some  one  who  had  been 
with  him  in  France,  and  was  fond  of  him — for, 
like  all  wives,  she  soon  discovered  that.  But 
all  the  time  I  felt  that  there  were  questions 
she  wanted  to  ask  me,  and  could  not.  I  will 
not  pretend  to  tell  you  how  she  was  dressed, 
because  I  don't  know;  I  seldom  notice,  and 
then  I  never  remember.  But  she  appealed  to 
me  very  much,  and  I  made  up  my  mind  to 
look  after  her  interests  if  I  ever  had  the  chance, 
if  there  was  ever  a  question  between  Harry 
and  a  single  man.  I  had  no  chance  of  a  talk 
with  Harry,  and  noticed  only  that  he  seemed 
pretty  fit  again  but  sleepless-looking. 

The  second  night  I  went  there  was  the  last 
night  of  Harry's  leave.  If  I  had  known  that 
when  I  was  asked  I  think  I  should  not  have 
gone;  for  while  it  showed  I  was  a  privileged 
person,  it  is  a  painful  privilege  to  break  in  on 
the  "last  evening"  of  husband  and  wife;  I 
know  those  last  evenings.  And  though  Harry 
was  only  going  back  to  the  Depot  in  the  morn- 
ing, it  was  known  there  had  been  heavy  losses 
[202] 


The  Secret  Battle 

in  the  regiment;  there  was  talk  of  a  draft  .  .  . 
it  might  well  be  the  last  evening  of  all. 

I  got  there  early,  at  Harry's  request,  about 
half-past  five,  on  a  miserable  gusty  evening  in 
early  November.  Harry  was  sitting  in  a  kind 
of  study,  library,  or  den,  writing;  he  looked 
less  well,  and  very  sleepless  about  the  eyes. 

It  was  the  anniversary  of  one  of  the  great 
battles  of  the  regiment;  and  we  talked  a  little 
of  that  day,  as  soldiers  will,  with  a  sort  of 
gloomy  satisfaction.  Then  Harry  said, 
slowly: 

"I've  been  offered  a  job  at  the  War  Office 
— by  Major  Mackenzie — Intelligence." 

"Oh,"  I  said,  "that's  very  good."  (But  I 
was  thinking  more  of  Mrs.  Harry  than 
Harry.) 

Harry  went  on,  as  if  he  had  not  heard.  "I 
was  writing  to  him  when  you  came  in.  And 
I  don't  know  what  to  say." 

"Why  not?" 

"Well,"  he  said,  "you  know  as  well  as  any 
one  what  sort  of  time  I've  had,  and  how  I've 
been  treated — by  Philpott  and  others.  And 
I've  had  about  enough  of  it.  I  remember 

[203] 


The  Secret  Battle 

telling  you  once  on  the  Peninsula  that  I 
thought  myself  fairly  brave  when  I  first  went 
out  .  .  .  and,  my  God,  so  I  was  compared 
with  what  I  am  now.  ...  I  suppose  every 
one  has  his  breaking-point,  and  IVe  certainly 
had  mine.  ...  I  simply  feel  I  can't  face  it 
again." 

"Very  well,"  I  said,  "take  the  job  and  have 
done  with  it.  YouVe  done  as  much  as  you 
can,  and  you  can't  do  more.  What's  the  trou- 
ble?" 

But  he  went  on,  seemingly  to  convince  him- 
self rather  than  me.  "IVe  never  got  over 
those  awful  working-parties  in  that val- 
ley; I  had  two  or  three  5-9*8  burst  right  on  top 
of  me,  you  know  .  .  .  the  Lord  knows  how  I 
escaped  .  .  .  and  now  I  simply  dream  of 
them.  I  dream  of  them  every  night  .  .  . 
usually  it's  an  enormous  endless  plain,  full  of 
shell-holes,  of  course,  and  raining  like  hell, 
and  I  walk  for  miles  (usually  with  you)  look- 
ing over  my  shoulder,  waiting  for  the  shells 
to  come  .  .  .  and  then  I  hear  that  savage  kind 
of  high-velocity  shriek,  and  I  run  like  hell 
.  .  .  only  I  can't  run,  of  course,  that's  the 

[204] 


The  Secret  Battle 

worst  part  .  .  .  and  I  get  into  a  ditch  and  lie 
there  .  .  .  and  then  one  comes  that  I  know 
by  the  sound  is  going  to  burst  on  top  of  me 
.  .  .  and  I  wake  up  simply  sweating  with 
funk.  I've  never  told  anybody  but  you  about 
this,  not  even  Peggy,  but  she  says  I  wake  her 
up  sometimes,  making  an  awful  noise." 

He  was  silent  for  a  little,  and  I  had  nothing 
to  say. 

"And  then  it's  all  so  different  now,  so 
damnably  .  .  .  dull.  ...  I  wouldn't  mind  if 
we  could  all  go  out  together  again  .  .  .  just 
the  Old  Crowd  ...  so  that  we  could  have 
good  evenings,  and  not  care  what  happened. 
But  now  there's  nobody  left  (I  don't  expect 
they'll  let  you  go  out  again),  only  poor  old 
Egerton — he's  back  again  .  .  .  and  I  can't 
stand  all  those  boot-faced  N.  C.  O.  officers  and 
people  like  Philpott,  and  all  the  Old  Duds. 
.  .  .  You  can't  get  away  from  it — the  boot- 
faces  aren't  officers,  and  nothing  will  make 
them  so  ...  even  the  men  can't  stand  them. 
And  they  get  on  my  nerves.  .  .  . 

"It  all  gets  on  my  nerves,  the  mud,  and  the 
cold,  and  the  futile  Brigadiers,  and  all  the 

[205] 


The  Secret  Battle 

damned  eyewash  we  have  nowadays  .  .  . 
never  having  a  decent  wash,  and  being 
cramped  up  in  a  dug-out  the  size  of  a  chest- 
of-drawers  with  four  boot-faces  .  .  .  where 
you  can't  move  without  upsetting  the  candle 
and  the  food,  or  banging  your  head  .  .  .  and 
getting  lousy.  And  all  those  endless  ridicu- 
lous details  you  have  to  look  after  day  after 
day  .  .  .  working-parties  .  .  .  haversack  ra- 
tions .  .  .  has  every  man  got  his  box-respira- 
tor? .  .  .  why  haven't  you  cleaned  your  rifle? 
.  .  .  as  if  I  cared  a  damn!  .  .  .  No,  I  won't 
say  that  .  .  .  but  there  you  are,  you  see,  it's 
on  my  nerves.  .  .  .  But  sometimes"  (and 
though  I  sympathized  I  was  glad  there  was 
a  "but")  "when  I  think  of  some  of  the  bogus 
people  who've  been  out,  perhaps  once,  and 
come  home  after  three  months  with  a  nice 
blighty  in  the  shoulder,  and  got  a  job,  and 
stayed  in  it  ever  since  ...  I  feel  I  can't  do 
that  either,  and  run  the  risk  of  being  taken  for 
one  of  them.  .  .  ." 

"I  don't  think  there's  any  danger  of  that," 
I  remarked. 

"I  don't  know — one  'officer'  is  the  same  as 
[206] 


The  Secret  Battle 

another  to  most  people.  .  .  .  And  then,  you 
know,  although  you  hate  it,  it  does  get  hold  of 
you  somehow — out  there  .  .  .  and  after  a  bit, 
when  you've  got  used  to  being  at  home  you  get 
restless.  ...  I  know  I  did  last  time,  and  some- 
times I  do  now.  ...  I  don't  say  I  hunger  for 
the  battle,  I  never  want  to  be  in  a  'stunt'  again 
.  .  .  but  you  feel  kind  of  'out  of  it'  when  you 
read  the  papers,  or  meet  somebody  on  leave 
.  .  .  you  think  of  the  amusing  evenings  we 
used  to  have.  .  .  .  And  I  rather  enjoyed  'trek- 
king' about  in  the  back  areas  .  .  .  especially 
when  I  had  a  horse  .  .  .  wandering  along  on 
a  good  frosty  day,  and  never  sure  what  village 
you  were  going  to  sleep  in  ...  marching 
through  Doullens  with  the  band  .  .  .  estami- 
nets,  and  talking  French,  and  all  the  rest  of 
it.  ... 

"And  then  I  think  of  a  5-9 — and  I  know 
I'm  done  for.  .  .  .  I've  got  too  much  imagina- 
tion, that's  the  trouble  (I  hope  you're  not  fed 
up  with  all  this,  but  I  want  your  advice).  .  .  . 
It's  funny,  one  never  used  to  think  about  get- 
ting killed,  even  in  the  war  ...  it  seemed 
impossible  somehow  that  you  yourself  could 

[207] 


The  Secret  Battle 

be  killed  (did  you  ever  have  that  feeling?) 
.  .  .  though  one  was  ready  enough  in  those 
days  ...  but  now — even  in  the  train  the 
other  day,  going  down  to  Bristol  by  the  ex- 
press, I  found  I  was  imagining  what  would 
happen  if  there  was  a  smash  .  .  .  things  one 
reads  of,  you  know  .  .  .  carriages  catching 
fire,  and  so  on  ...  just  'wind-up.'  And  the 
question  is — is  it  any  good  going  out,  if  youVe 
got  into  that  state?  .  .  .  And  if  one  says  (No,' 
is  one  just  making  it  an  excuse?  .  .  .  It's  no 
good  telling  a  military  doctor  all  this  .  .  . 
they'd  just  say,  'Haw,  skrim-shanker!  what 
you  want  is  some  fresh  air  and  exercise,  my 
son!'  .  .  .  And  for  all  I  know  they  may  be 
right.  ...  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  don't  think 
I'm  physically  fit,  really  ...  my  own  doctor 
says  not  .  .  .  but  you're  never  examined  prop- 
erly before  you  go  out,  as  you  know.  .  .  .  You 
all  troop  in  by  the  dozen  at  the  last  moment 
.  .  .  and  the  fellow  says,  'Feeling  quite  fit?' 
.  .  .  And  if  you've  just  had  a  good  breakfast 
and  feel  buckish,  you  say,  'Yes,  thank  you,' 
and  there  you  are.  .  .  .  Unless  you  ask  them 
to  examine  you  you  might  have  galloping 

[208] 


The  Secret  Battle 

consumption  for  all  they  know,  and  I'm 
damned  if  I'd  ask  them.  .  .  .  After  all,  I  sup- 
pose the  system's  right.  ...  If  a  man  can  stick 
it  for  a  month  or  two  in  the  line,  he's  worth 
sending  there  if  he's  an  officer  .  .  .  and  it 
doesn't  matter  to  the  country  if  he  dies  of  con- 
sumption afterwards.  .  .  .  But  my  trouble  is 
— can  I  stick  it  for  a  month  or  two  ...  or 
shall  I  go  and  do  some  awful  thing,  and  let  a 
lot  of  fellows  down?  .  .  .  Putting  aside  my 
own  inclinations,  which  are  probably  pretty 
selfish,  what  is  it  my  duty  to  do?  ...  After 
friend  Philpott  I  don't  know  that  I'm  so  keen 
on  duty  as  I  was  .  .  .  but  I  do  want  to  stick 

this war  out  on  the  right  line,  if  I  can. 

.  .  .  What  do  you  think?" 

"Before  I  answer  that,"  I  said,  "there's  one 
consideration  you  seem  to  have  overlooked — 
and  that  is  Mrs.  Penrose.  .  .  .  After  all, 
you're  a  married  man,  and  that  makes  a  differ- 
ence, doesn't  it?" 

"Well,  does  it?  I  don't  really  see  why  it 
should  make  any  difference  about  going  out, 
or  not  going  out  .  .  .  otherwise  every  shirker 
could  run  off  and  many  a  wife,  and  live  hap- 

[209] 


The  Secret  Battle 

pily  ever  after.  ...  But  it  certainly  makes  it 
a  damned  sight  harder  to  decide  .  .  .  and  it 
makes  the  hell  of  a  difference  when  you're  out 
there.  .  .  .  You  can  make  up  your  mind  not 
to  think  of  it  when  you're  at  home  .  .  .  like 
this  .  .  .  but  out  there,  when  you're  cold  and 
fed  up,  and  just  starting  up  the  line  with  a 
working-party  .  .  .  you  can't  help  thinking 
of  it,  and  it  makes  things  about  ten  times  more 
difficult  .  .  .  and  as  you  know,  it's  jolly  hard 
not  to  let  it  make  a  difference  to  what  you  do. 
.  .  .  But,  damn  it,  why  did  you  remind  me  of 
that?  I  didn't  want  to  think  about  it." 

And  then  Mrs.  Penrose  came  in,  and  we 
went  down  to  dinner. 

II 

I  did  not  enjoy  that  dinner.  To  begin  with, 
I  felt  like  a  vulgar  intruder  on  something  that 
was  almost  sacred,  and  certainly  very  precious. 
For  all  the  signs  of  the  "last  evening"  were 
there.  The  dishes  we  had  were  Harry's  fa- 
vourites, procured  at  I  know  what  trouble  and 
expense  by  Mrs.  Harry;  and  she  watched 

[210] 


The  Secret  Battle 

tremulously  to  see  that  he  liked  them.  She 
had  gone  out  and  bought  him  a  bottle  of  well- 
loved  Moselle,  for  a  special  surprise,  and  some 
port;  which  was  a  huge  extravagance.  But 
that  was  nothing,  if  these  things  could  only 
give  a  special  something  to  this  meal  which 
would  make  him  remember  it;  for  the  flowers 
he  never  saw,  and  the  new  dress  went  un- 
noticed for  a  long  time.  But  I  felt  that  it 
would  all  have  gone  much  better,  perhaps,  if 
I  had  not  been  there,  and  I  hoped  she  did  not 
hate  me. 

And  Harry  was  not  at  his  best.  The  ques- 
tion he  asked  me  I  had  had  no  time  to  answer, 
and  he  had  not  answered  it  himself.  Through 
most  of  that  dinner,  which  by  all  the  rules 
should  have  been,  superficially  at  least,  cheer- 
ful and  careless,  as  if  there  were  no  such  thing 
as  separation  ahead,  Harry  was  thoughtful 
and  preoccupied.  And  I  knew  that  he  was 
still  arguing  with  himself,  "What  shall  I  say 
to  Mackenzie?  Yes  or  No?" — wandering  up 
and  down  among  the  old  doubts  and  resolu- 
tions and  fears.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Harry  saw  this  as 

[211] 


The  Secret  Battle 

well  as  I  ...  and,  no  doubt,  she  cursed  me 
for  being  there  because  in  my  presence  she 
could  not  ask  him  what  worried  him. 

But  the  Moselle  began  to  do  its  work: 
Harry  talked  a  little  and  noticed  the  new 
dress,  and  we  all  laughed  a  lot  at  the  pudding, 
which  came  up  in  such  a  curious  shape.  .  .  . 
We  were  very  glad  to  laugh  at  something. 

Then  Mrs.  Harry  spoke  of  some  people  in 
the  regiment  of  whom  she  had  heard  a  good 
deal — George  Dawson,  and  Egerton,  and  old 
Colonel  Roberts.  I  knew  that  in  a  minute  we 
should  stumble  into  talking  about  the  trenches 
or  shells,  or  some  such  folly,  and  have  Harry 
gloomy  and  brooding  again.  I  could  not 
stand  that,  and  I  did  not  think  Mrs.  Harry 
could,  so  I  plunged  recklessly  into  the 
smoother  waters  of  life  in  France.  I  told 
them  the  old  story  about  General  Jackson  and 
the  billet-guard ;  and  then  we  came  on  to  the 
famous  night  at  Forceville,  and  other  historic 
battalion  orgies — the  dinner  at  Monchy 
Breton,  when  we  put  a  row  of  candles  on  the 
floor  of  the  tent  for  footlights,  and  George 
and  a  few  subs  made  a  perfect  beauty  chorus. 
[212] 


The  Secret  Battle 

Those  are  the  things  one  likes  to  remember 
about  active  service,  and  I  was  very  glad  to 
remember  them  then.  The  special  port  came 
in  and  was  a  great  success;  Harry  warmed  up, 
and  laughed  over  those  old  gaieties,  and  was 
in  great  form.  At  that  moment  I  think  his  an- 
swer to  Major  Mackenzie  would  have  been 
definitely  "No." 

Mrs.  Harry  laughed  very  much  too,  and 
said  she  envied  us  the  amusing  times  we  had 
together  "out  there."  "You  men  have  all  the 
fun."  And  that  made  me  feel  a  heartless 
ass  for  having  started  on  that  topic.  For  I 
knew  that  when  Harry  was  away  there  was 
little  "fun"  for  her;  and  whether  he  was  lying 
on  his  stomach  in  a  shell-hole,  or  singing  songs 
in  an  estaminet,  not  thinking  much  of  his  wife, 
perhaps,  except  when  they  drank  "Sweethearts 
and  Wives" — it  was  all  one  uniform,  hideous 
wait  for  her.  So  I  think  it  was  hollow  laugh- 
ter for  Mrs.  P.  ... 

Moreover,  though  I  did  not  know  how  much 
she  knew  about  Harry's  difficulties,  the  "job" 
and  so  on,  I  felt  sure  that  with  the  extraor- 
dinary instinct  of  a  wife  she  scented  some- 


The  Secret  Battle 

thing  of  the  conflict  that  was  going  on;  and 
she  knew  vaguely  that  this  exaggerated  lauda- 
tion of  the  amenities  of  France  meant  some- 
how danger  to  her.  ...  So  that  just  as  I  was 
beginning  to  congratulate  myself  on  the  buck- 
ing up  of  Harry,  I  tardily  perceived  that  be- 
tween us  we  were  wounding  the  wife.  And  I 
more  than  ever  wished  myself  anywhere  than 
sitting  at  that  pretty  table  with  the  shaded 
lights. 

Well,  we  nearly  finished  the  port — Harry 
still  in  excellent  form — and  went  upstairs. 
Harry  went  oft  to  look  for  smokes  or  some- 
thing, and  I  knew  at  once  that  Mrs.  Harry 
was  going  to  ask  me  questions  about  him. 
You  know  how  a  woman  stands  in  front  of 
the  fire,  and  looks  down,  and  kind  of  paws 
the  fender  with  one  foot  when  she  is  going  to 
say  something  confidential.  Then  she  looks 
up  suddenly,  and  you're  done.  Mrs.  Harry 
did  that,  and  I  was  done.  At  any  other  time 
I  should  have  loved  to  talk  to  her  about 
Harry,  but  that  night  I  felt  it  was  dangerous 
ground. 

"How  do  you  think  Harry  is  looking?"  she 


The  Secret  Battle 

said.  "You  probably  know  better  than  I  do, 
nowadays." 

I  said  I  thought  he  seemed  pretty  fit,  con- 
sidering all  things. 

"Do  you  think  he'll  have  to  go  out  again?" 
she  asked.  "I  don't  think  he  ought  to — but 
they  seem  so  short  of  men  still.  He's  not 
really  strong,  you  know." 

So  she  knew  nothing  about  the  "job" ;  and 
this  put  me  in  a  hole.  For  if  I  told  her  about 
it,  and  he  did  not  take  it,  but  went  out  again, 
the  knowledge  would  be  a  standing  torture  to 
her.  On  the  other  hand,  I  wanted  him  to  take 
it,  I  thought  he  ought  to — and  if  she  knew 
about  it  she  might  be  able  to  make  him. 
Wives  can  do  a  great  deal  in  that  way.  But 
that  would  be  disloyal  to  Harry.  .  .  . 

Well,  I  temporized  with  vague  answers 
while  I  wrestled  with  this  problem,  and  she 
told  me  more  about  Harry.  "You  know,  he 
has  the  most  terrible  dreams  .  .  .  wakes  up 
screaming  at  night,  and  quite  frightens  me. 
And  I  don't  think  they  ought  to  be  allowed 
to  go  out  again  when  they're  like  that.  .  .  . 
I  don't  want  him  to  go  out  again.  ...  At 


The  Secret  Battle 

least,"  she  added  half-heartedly  (as  a  kind  of 
concession  to  convention),  "if  it's  his  duty,  of 
course  .  .  ."  Then,  defiantly,  "No,  I  don't 
want  him  to  go  ...  anyhow  ...  I  think 
he's  done  his  bit  ...  hasn't  he,  Mr.  Benson?" 

"He  has,  indeed,"  I  said,  with  sincerity  at 
last. 

"Well,  you  have  some  influence  with  him. 
Can't  you " 

But  then  Harry  came  in,  and  I  had  lost  my 
chance.  I  have  noticed  that  while  on  the 
stage,  conversations  which  must  necessarily  be 
private  are  invariably  concluded  without  in- 
terruption, in  private  life,  and  especially  pri- 
vate houses,  they  are  always  interrupted  long 
before  the  end. 

Mrs.  Harry  went  to  the  piano,  and  Harry 
and  I  sat  down  to  smoke;  and  since  it  was 
the  last  night  Harry  was  allowed  to  smoke 
his  pipe.  The  way  Mrs.  Harry  said  that 
nearly  made  me  weep. 

So  I  sat  there  and  watched  Harry,  and  his 
wife  played  and  played — soft,  melancholy, 
homesick  things  (Chopin,  I  think),  that 
leagued  with  the  wine  and  the  warm  fire  and 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  deep  chairs  in  an  exquisite  conspiracy  of 
repose.  She  played  for  a  long  time,  but  I  saw 
that  she  too  was  watching.  And  the  fancy 
came  to  me  that  she  was  fighting  for  Harry, 
fighting,  perhaps  unconsciously,  that  vague 
danger  she  had  seen  at  dinner,  when  it  had 
beaten  her  .  .  .  fighting  it  with  this  music 
that  made  war  seem  so  distant  and  home  so 
lovable.  .  .  . 

And  soon  I  began  to  see  that  she  was  win- 
ning. For  when  she  began  playing  Harry 
had  sat  down,  a  little  restless  again,  and 
fidgeted,  as  if  the  music  reminded  him  of  good 
things  too  much  .  .  .  and  his  eyes  wandered 
round  the  room  and  took  in  all  the  familiar 
things,  like  a  man  saying  good-bye — the  old 
chair  with  the  new  chintz,  and  the  yellow 
curtains,  and  the  bookcase  his  father  left  him 
— and  the  little  bookcase  where  his  history 
books  were  (he  looked  a  long  time  at  them) 
.  .  .  and  the  firelight  shining  on  the  piano 
.  .  .  and  his  wife  playing  and  playing.  .  .  . 
And  when  he  had  looked  at  her,  quickly,  he 
sat  up  and  poked  the  fire  fiercely,  and  sat  back, 
frowning.  He  was  wondering  again.  This 


The  Secret  Battle 

music  was  being  too  much  for  him.  Then 
she  stopped,  and  looked  across  at  Harry — and 
smiled. 

When  she  played  again  it  was,  I  think,  a 
nocturne  of  Chopin's  (God  knows  which — but 
it  was  very  peaceful  and  homesick),  and  as 
I  watched,  I  made  sure  that  she  had  won. 
For  there  came  over  Harry  a  wonderful  re- 
pose. He  no  longer  frowned  or  fidgeted,  or 
raised  his  eyebrows  in  the  nervous  way  he 
had,  but  lay  back  in  a  kind  of  abandonment 
of  content.  .  .  .  And  I  said  to  myself,  "He 
has  decided — he  will  say  'Yes'  to  Mackenzie." 

Mrs.  Harry,  perhaps,  also  perceived  it. 
For  after  a  little  she  stopped  and  came  over 
to  us.  And  then  I  did  a  fateful  thing.  There 
was  a  copy  of  The  Times  lying  by  my  chair, 
and  because  of  the  silence  that  was  on  us,  I 
picked  it  up  and  looked  aimlessly  at  it. 

The  first  thing  I  saw  was  the  Casualty  List, 
buried  in  small  type  among  some  vast  ad- 
vertisements of  patent  foods.  I  glanced  down 
the  list  in  that  casual  manner  which  came  to 
us  when  we  knew  that  all  our  best  friends  were 
already  dead  or  disposed  of.  Then  my  eye 
[218] 


The  Secret  Battle 

caught  the  name  of  the  regiment  and  the  name 
of  a  man  I  knew.  CAPTAIN  EGERTON,  V.  R. 
Killed.  There  was  another  near  it,  and  an- 
other, and  many  more ;  the  list  was  thick  with 
them.  And  the  other  battalions  in  the  Bri- 
gade had  many  names  there — fellows  one  had 
relieved  in  the  line,  or  seen  in  billets,  or  talked 
with  in  the  Cocktail  Cafe  at  Nceux-les-Mines. 
There  must  have  been  a  masscre  in  the  Bri- 
gade ...  ten  officers  killed  and  ten  wounded 
in  our  lot  alone. 

I  suppose  I  made  that  vague  murmur  of 
rage  and  regret  which  slips  out  of  you  when 
you  read  these  things,  for  Harry  looked  up 
and  asked,  "What's  that?"  I  gave  him  the 
paper,  and  he  too  looked  down  that  list.  .  .  . 
Only  two  of  those  names  were  names  of  the 
Old  Crowd,  and  many  of  them  were  the  dull 
men ;  but  we  knew  them  very  well  for  all  that, 
and  we  knew  they  were  good  men  .  .  . 
Egerton,  Gordon,  young  Matthews,  Spenser, 
Smith,  the  bombing  fellow,  Tompkinson — all 
gone.  .  .  . 

So  we  were  silent  for  a  long  minute,  re- 
membering those  men,  and  Mrs.  Harry  stared 


The  Secret  Battle 

into  the  fire.  I  wondered  what  she  was  think- 
ing of,  and  I  was  sorry  for  her.  For  when 
Harry  got  up  there  was  a  look  about  him 
which  I  had  seen  before,  though  not  for  many 
months — not  since  the  first  days  on  the 
Somme.  .  .  . 

While  I  was  groping  after  my  coat  in  the 
hall,  Harry  came  out  of  his  den  with  a  letter 
which  he  asked  me  to  "drop  in  the  box."  I 
looked  at  it  without  shame ;  it  was  addressed 
to  Major  Mackenzie,  D.  S.  O.,  etc. 

"And  what  have  you  said?"  I  asked. 

"No,"  said  Harry,  with  a  kind  of  challeng- 
ing look. 

"Well,  I  think  you're  wrong "  I  told 

him,  though  I  knew  then  that  I  was  too  late. 
Mrs.  Harry  was  beaten  now,  finally  beaten, 
poor  thing.  ... 

"And  what  are  you  two  talking  about?"  said 
Mrs.  Harry. 

"About  a  dinner,  my  dear." 

I  went  out  and  posted  that  accursed  letter, 
thanking  God  that  I  was  not  a  wife. 


[220] 


XI 


HARRY  went  to  France  again  a  month 
later,  after  the  futile  kind  of  medical 
examination  he  had  foretold.     I  had 
a  letter  from  him  from  the  Base,  and  after 
that  there  was  silence.     I  even  began  to  hunt 
about  in  the  casualty  lists,  but  he  was  never 
there.     And  seven  weeks  later  they  let  me  go 
out  again  myself,  to  the  astonishment  of  all 
but  the  military  doctors. 

At  the  Base  I  heard  of  Harry.  Some  one 
had  been  wanted  for  some  kind  of  job  down 
there,  an  officer  to  instruct  the  Details  in  the 
mysteries  of  Iron  Rations,  or  something  of  the 
sort.  Harry,  happening  to  be  there  at  the 
time,  and  pleasing  the  eye  of  the  aldermanic 
officer  in  command  of  our  Base  Depot,  had 
been  graciously  appointed  to  the  post  But 
he  had  caused  a  considerable  flutter  in  the 
tents  of  the  mighty  by  flatly  declining  it,  and 

[221] 


The  Secret  Battle 

stating  insanely  that  he  preferred  to  go  up  to 
the  line.  This  being  still  the  one  topic  of 
conversation  in  the  camp,  I  did  not  linger 
there  longer  than  was  absolutely  necessary. 
Infantry  Base  Depots  are  bad  places,  and  that 
one  was  very  bad;  you  had  worse  food,  worse 
treatment,  and  worse  company  than  you  ever 
had  in  the  line — much  discomfort,  and  no  dig- 
nity. I  never  understood  why  officers  should 
be  treated  with  such  contempt  whenever  there 
were  a  number  of  them  together.  If  you  went 
about  by  yourself,  or  with  another  officer  or 
two,  you  had  a  certain  amount  of  politeness  and 
consideration  from  military  officials;  but  as 
soon  as  you  got  with  a  "herd"  of  officers  you 
were  doomed — you  were  dirt.  If  the  inten- 
tion at  the  Base  was  to  make  the  line  seem  a 
haven  of  refuge  and  civility,  it  was  highly 
successful  as  far  as  I  was  concerned.  .  .  . 

I  got  back  to  the  battalion  under  the  usual 
conditions  ...  a  long  jog  in  the  mess-cart 
under  the  interminable  dripping  poplars,  with 
a  vile  wind  lashing  the  usual  rain  over  the 
usual  flat  fields,  where  the  old  women 
laboured  and  stooped  as  usual,  and  took 

[222] 


The  Secret  Battle 

no  notice  of  anything.  The  heart  sinks  a 
little  as  you  look  at  the  shivering  drear- 
iness of  it  all.  And  if  it  is  near  the  line 
you  hope  secretly  that  the  battalion  is  "out" 
for  at  least  a  few  days  more,  that  you  may 
have  just  two  days  to  get  used  to  this  beastli- 
ness again,  and  not  be  met  by  some  cheery 
acclimatized  ass  with  a  "Glad  to  see  you, 
old  son — just  in  time — going  up  tonight,  do- 
ing a  'stunt'  on  Tuesday!"  Yet,  as  you  come 
to  the  village,  there  is  a  strange  sense  of 
home-coming  that  comes  with  the  recogni- 
tion of  familiar  things — limbers  clattering  and 
splashing  along,  and  the  regimental  postman 
trudging  back  with  the  mail,  and  C  Company 
cooker  steaming  pleasantly  under  an  outhouse, 
and  odd  men  with  waterproof  sheets  draped 
over  the  shoulders,  wet  and  glistening.  .  .  . 
Today  I  was  lucky,  for  the  battalion  was  a 
long  way  back,  resting,  so  that  this  home-com- 
ing sense  was  strong  upon  me.  And  I  wanted 
to  see  Harry. 

When  I  came  near  to  the  usual  main  street 
I  saw  the  battalion  marching  in  by  a  side  road, 
coming  back  from  a  route  march.  I  sent  my 

[223] 


The  Secret  Battle 

gear  ahead,  and  got  down  to  see  them  pass. 
It  was  strangely  pleasant.  The  drums  of  the 
little  band  were  covered  because  of  the  wet, 
and  only  the  bugles  brayed  harshly,  but  very 
cheerfully.  Old  Philpott  was  ahead  of  them, 
riding  fatly  on  his  mild  black  mare,  and  re- 
turned my  salute  quite  pleasantly.  You  could 
see  a  lot  of  young  recruits  among  the  men,  and 
there  were  many  officers  I  had  never  seen,  but 
the  welcoming  grins  of  the  old  men  we  had 
had  from  the  beginning,  mostly  N.  C.  O.'s 
now,  made  up  for  that.  Young  Smith  I  saw, 
in  command  of  C  Company  now,  and  Tarrant, 
our  late  Transport  Officer,  was  squelching  at 
the  head  of  a  platoon,  obviously  not  liking  it 
much.  Then  came  D  Company,  and  I  looked 
eagerly  for  Harry.  Stephenson  I  knew,  in 
command  (how  young  the  company  com- 
manders were !) ,  but  there  were  only  two  other 
officers,  and  they  both  strange.  The  last  of 
them  tramped  past,  and  I  was  left  silent  in  the 
rain,  foolishly  disturbed.  .  .  .  Where  was 
Harry?  Ass — no  doubt  he  is  orderly  officer, 
or  away  on  a  course.  But  I  'was  disturbed; 
and  the  thought  came  to  me  that  if  any- 
[224] 


The  Secret  Battle 

thing  had  happened  to  him  I,  too,  should  be 
lonely  here,  with  none  of  the  Old  Crowd 
left. 

I  walked  on  then,  and  came  to  the  little  flag 
of  D  Company  headquarters  flapping  damply 
outside  an  estaminet.  In  the  mess  they  greeted 
me  very  kindly  and  gave  me  tea — but  there 
was  still  no  Harry.  But  they  all  talked  very 
fast,  and  the  tea  was  good. 

"And  where's  Penrose?"  I  asked  at  last. 
"I  haven't  seen  him  yet." 

I  had  spoken  to  Stephenson.  He  did  not 
answer  immediately ;  but  he  picked  up  his  cup 
and  drank,  assiduously;  then  he  kind  of  mum- 
bled, very  low  and  apologetic : 

"He's  in  his  billet — under  close  arrest." 

"Under  arrest!     My  God,  what  for?" 

Stephenson  began  to  drink  again;  he  was  a 
good  fellow,  who  knew  that  Harry  and  I  were 
friends;  also  he  had  known  Harry  in  the 
Souchez  days,  and  he  did  not  like  having  to 
tell  me  this. 

But  one  of  his  young  subalterns,  a  young 
pup  just  out,  was  less  sensitive,  and  told  me, 
brutally: 

[225] 


The  Secret  Battle 

"Running  away — cowardice  in  the  face  of 
— et  cetera — have  some  more  tea?" 

II 

Bit  by  bit  I  heard  the  whole  miserable  story 
— or  rather  that  naked  kernel  of  it  which 
passed  publicly  for  the  whole  story.  I  had  to 
make  my  own  footnotes,  my  own  queries. 

The  first  night  Harry  was  with  the  battalion 
Philpott  had  sent  him  up  with  a  carrying- 
party  to  the  Front  Line,  or  thereabouts,  fifty 
men  and  some  engineering  stuff  of  sorts, 
wiring  trestles,  barbed  wire,  or  something. 
It  was  shell-hole  country,  no  communication 
trenches  or  anything,  and  since  there  had  been 
an  attack  recently,  the  Boche  artillery  was 
very  active  on  the  roads  and  back  areas.  Also 
there  was  the  usual  rotten  valley  to  cross,  with 
the  hell  of  a  barrage  in  it.  So  much  these 
young  braves  conceded.  Harry  had  started 
off  with  his  party,  had  called  at  the  Brigade 
Dump,  and  picked  up  the  stuff.  Later  on 
some  one  rang  up  Brigade  from  the  line  and 
said  no  party  had  arrived.  Brigade  rang  up 
Philpott,  and  he  sent  up  the  Assistant  Adju- 
[226] 


The  Secret  Battle 

tant  to  investigate.  Somewhere  in  the  Arras 
Road  he  had  come  upon  Harry,  with  most  of 
the  party,  running  down  the  road — towards 
the  Dump — away  from  the  line.  The  stores 
were  urgently  needed  at  the  front;  they  never 
got  there.  That  was  all.  The  court-martial 
was  tomorrow. 

Well,  it  was  a  black  story,  but  I  made  one 
or  two  footnotes  at  once. 

The  very  first  night  he  was  back.  The  aw- 
ful luck — the  cruelty  of  it!  Just  back,  in  the 
condition  of  nerves  I  knew  him  to  be  in,  with 
that  first  miserable  feeling  upon  him,  wonder- 
ing probably  why  the  hell  he  had  driven  him- 
self out  there,  and  praying  to  be  let  down  easy 
for  one  night  at  least — and  then  to  be  sent 
straight  up  on  a  job  like  that,  the  job  that  had 
broken  him  before. 

And  by  Philpott!  I  seemed  to  see  Philpott 
arranging  that,  with  a  kind  of  savage  glee: 
"Oh,  here's  Master  Penrose  again — well,  he'd 
better  take  that  party  tonight — instead  of  Mr. 
Gibson.  .  .  ." 

And  who  was  the  Assistant  Adjutant?     God 


The  Secret  Battle 

knows,  if  every  working-party  that  went 
wrong  meant  a  court-martial,  there  would  be 
no  officers  left  in  the  army ;  and  if  some  busy- 
body had  been  at  work.  .  .  . 

"Who's  the  Assistant  Adjutant?"  I  asked. 

"Fellow  who  was  attached  to  the  Division 
— used  to  be  in  this  battalion  in  your  time, 
I  believe — whatVhis-name  ? — Burnett — Bur- 
nett— he  rang  up  the  Colonel  and  told  him 
about  it." 

Burnett!  I  groaned.  The  gods  were 
against  Harry  indeed.  Burnett  had  been 
away  from  the  battalion  for  eighteen  months, 
drifting  about  from  odd  job  to  odd  job — Town 
Major  here,  Dump  Officer  there,  never  in  the 
line.  .  .  .  Why  the  devil  had  he  come  back 

now  to  put  his  foot  in  it — and,  perhaps 

But  I  could  not  believe  that. 

Stephenson's  two  young  officers — Wallace 
and  Brown — made  no  footnote,  naturally. 
They  had  come  out  by  the  same  draft  as 
Harry,  one  from  Sandhurst,  the  other  from  a 
cadet  school;  they  were  fresh,  as  Harry  had 
been,  and  they  had  no  mercy.  And  while  I 

[228] 


The  Secret  Battle 

resented  their  tone,  I  tried  to  remember  that 
they  knew  not  Harry,  and  said  nothing. 

But  when  young  Wallace  summed  up  the 
subject  with  "Well,  all  I  can  say  is  he's  a  cold- 
footed  swine,  and  deserves  all  he  gets,"  I  ex- 
ploded. "You young  pup,"  I  said,  "just 

out,  and  hardly  seen  a  shot  fired — you  dare  to 
say  anything  about  Penrose.  I  tell  you  you're 
not  fit  to  lick  his  boots.  Do  you  know  that 
he  joined  up  in  the  ranks  in  August  '14,  and 
went  through  Gallipoli,  and  had  done  two 
years'  active  service  before  you  even  had  a 
uniform?  Do  you  know  he's  just  refused  a 
job  at  home  in  order  to  come  out  here,  and 
another  job  at  the  Base?  Does  that  look  like 
cold  feet?  You  wait  till  you've  been  out  a 
year,  my  son,  before  you  talk  about  cold  feet. 

You "    But  I  couldn't  control  myself  any 

further.     I  went  out,  cursing. 

Ill 

Then  I  got  leave  to  go  and  see  Harry.  He 
was  in  his  billet,  in  a  small  bedroom  on  the 
ground  floor.  There  was  a  sentry  standing  at 

[229] 


The  Secret  Battle 

the  window,  fixed  bayonet  and  all,  so  that  he 
should  neither  escape  nor  make  away  with 
himself. 

He  was  surprised  and,  I  think,  really 
pleased  to  see  me,  for  before  me,  as  he  said, 
or  any  one  who  knew  his  history,  he  was  not 
ashamed.  ...  It  was  only  when  the  ignorant, 
the  Wallaces,  were  near  that  he  was  filled  with 
humiliation,  because  of  the  things  he  knew 
they  were  thinking.  "That  sentry  out  there," 
he  told  me,  "was  in  my  platoon  at  Gallipoli 
— one  of  my  old  men;  just  before  you  came 
in  he  tapped  on  the  window  and  wished  me 
luck;  he  said  that  all  the  'old  lads'  did  the 
same.  ...  It  bucked  me  up  no  end." 

Not  that  he  needed  much  "bucking  up." 
For  he  was  strangely  quiet  and  resigned — more 
nearly  at  peace  with  everything  than  I  had 
seen  him  for  many  months.  "Only,"  he  said, 
"I  wish  to  God  that  I  was  a  single  man,  and  I 
wish  to  God  they  would  get  on  with  it.  .  .  ." 
He  had  been  under  arrest  for  six  weeks,  six 
solid  weeks  .  .  .  carted  about  from  place  to 
place  like  some  animal  waiting  for  slaughter; 
while  the  Summaries  of  Evidence  and  the 
[230] 


The  Secret  Battle 

Memos  and  the  Secret  Envelopes  went  back- 
wards and  forwards  through  "Units"  and 
through  "Formations,"  from  mandarin  to 
mandarin,  from  big- wig  to  big-wig;  while 
generals,  and  legal  advisers,  and  judge  advo- 
cates, and  twopenny-halfpenny  clerks  wrote 
their  miserable  initials  on  the  dirty  forms,  and 
wondered  what  the  devil  they  should  decide 
— and  decided — nothing  at  all.  All  this  ter- 
rible time  Harry  had  been  writing  to  his  wife, 
pretending  that  all  was  well  with  him,  describ- 
ing route  marches  and  scenery,  and  all  the 
usual  stuff  about  weather  and  clothes  and  food. 
.  .  .  Now  at  least  somebody  had  decided,  and 
Harry  was  almost  happy.  For  it  was  an  end 
of  suspense.  .  .  .  "Once  they  settled  on  a 
court-martial,"  he  said,  "I  knew  I  was  done 
.  .  .  and  except  for  Peggy,  I  don't  care.  .  .  . 
I  don't  know  what  they've  told  you,  but  I'd  like 
you  to  know  what  really  happened.  I  found 
the  battalion  at  Monval  (the  same  old  part), 
and  got  there  feeling  pretty  rotten.  Old  Phil- 
pott,  of  course,  sent  me  off  with  a  working- 
party  like  a  shot  out  of  a  gun — before  I'd  been 
there  an  hour.  I  picked  up  some  wiring  stuff 

[230 


The  Secret  Battle 

at  the  Brigade  Dump — it  was  a  long  way  up 
the  road  then,  not  far  from  Hellfire  Corner. 
Fritz  was  shelling  the  road  like  hell,  going  up 
and  down,  dropping  them  in  pairs,  fifty  yards 
further  every  time,  you  know  the  game.  .  .  . 
I  had  the  wind-up  pretty  badly,  and  so  had  the 
men,  poor  devils  .  .  .  but  what  was  worse, 
they  seemed  to  know  that  I  had.  .  .  .  We  had 
a  lot  of  shells  very  close  to  us,  and  some  of  the 
men  kept  rushing  towards  the  bank  when  they 
heard  one  coming.  .  .  .  Well,  you  don't  get 
on  very  fast  at  that  rate,  and  it's  damned  hard 
to  keep  hold  of  them  when  they're  like  that. 
.  .  .  And  knowing  they  were  like  that  made 
me  even  worse.  When  we  got  to  Dead  Mule 
Tree  about  ten  of  them  were  missing  .  .  . 
just  stayed  under  the  bank  in  the  holes.  ...  I 
don't  say  this  to  excuse  myself  ...  I  just  tell 
you  what  happened.  Then  we  got  to  that 
high  bit  where  the  bank  stops  and  the  valley 
goes  up  on  the  left.  .  .  .  You  know  the  awful 
exposed  feeling  one  has  there,  and  they  had  a 
regular  barrage  just  at  the  corner.  ...  I  got 
the  men  under  the  bank,  and  waited  till  a  shell 
burst  .  .  .  and  then  tried  to  dash  them  past 
[232] 


The  Secret  Battle 

before  the  next.  But  the  next  one  came  too 
fast,  and  fell  plunk  into  the  middle  of  the  col- 
umn— behind  me.  .  .  .  Three  men  were  killed 
outright,  and  those  of  us  who  hadn't  flung 
themselves  down  were  knocked  over.  I  fell 
in  a  kind  of  narrow  ditch  by  the  road.  When 
I  put  my  head  up  and  looked  back  I  saw  some 
of  the  men  vanishing  back  under  the  bank. 
Then  another  one  came — 8-inch  I  should  think 
they  were — and  I  grovelled  in  the  ditch  again. 
...  It  was  just  like  my  awful  dreams.  .  .  . 
I  must  have  been  there  about  ten  minutes. 
After  every  one  I  started  to  get  up  and  go  back 
to  the  men  under  the  bank,  meaning  to  get 
them  together  again.  Every  time  the  next  one 
came  too  quick,  and  I  was  pinned,  simply 
pinned  in  that  ditch.  Then  Fritz  stopped  for 
a  minute  or  two — altering  the  program,  I 
suppose — and  I  got  up  and  ran  like  hell  for 
the  bank.  The  four  or  five  men  lying  near 
me  got  up  and  ran  too. 

"When  we  got  under  the  bank  we  lay  down 
and  I  looked  round  .  .  .  there  was  not  a  man 
to  be  seen.  I  shouted,  but  at  first  nothing 
happened.  And,  I  tell  you,  I  was  glad.  .  .  . 

[233] 


The  Secret  Battle 

Some  of  the  men  who  had  gone  back,  not  see- 
ing me  anywhere,  had  melted  away  home. 
...  I  don't  blame  them.  .  .  .  Then  a  few 
drifted  along  from  further  down  the  bank. 
...  By  degrees  most  of  the  party  turned  up 
.  .  .  there  must  have  been  between  thirty  and 
forty  of  them  in  the  end.  .  .  .  : 

"And  then,  you  see,  I  knew  I  should  have 
to  go  on  again  .  .  .  get  past  the  corner  some- 
how. .  .  .  And 

"And  I  couldn't.  ...  I  simply  couldn't 
face  it.  ...  Peters  (the  N.  C.  O.)  said 
something  about  'Going  to  have  another 
shot,  sir?'  He  was  pretty  shaken  him- 
self— they  all  were  .  .  .  but  he'd  have  gone. 
.  .  .  We  ought  to  have  gone  on.  ...  I  know 
that.  .  .  .  But  .  .  .  Anyhow,  I  told  him  I 
didn't  think  we  should  ever  get  by  at  present, 
and  said  we'd  better  go  back  a  bit  and  wait 
under  cover  .  .  .  some  yarn  or  other.  .  .  . 
So  we  started  back  down  the  road.  .  .  .  The 
Boche  was  still  doing  the  up  and  down  game 
on  the  road,  only  about  twice  as  much.  .  .  . 
By  this  time  I  can  tell  you  there  was  no  shame 
between  those  men  and  me  .  .  .  we  under- 

[234] 


The  Secret  Battle 

stood  each  other  .  .  .  every  time  we  heard  that 
damned  shriek  we  fell  into  shell-holes  and 
prayed.  .  .  .  They  were  following  us  down 
the  road,  getting  nearer  and  nearer.  .  .  .  You 
know  that  dug-out  in  the  bank  where  Head- 
quarters used  to  be.  Well,  just  when  it  looked 
as  if  the  next  lot  must  come  right  on  top  of 
us,  I  saw  a  light  coming  from  the  dug-out, 
and  most  of  us  ran  hell  for  leather  for  the 
door.  Some  one  was  standing  at  the  entrance 
as  we  dashed  in  ...  just  in  time  ...  we 
nearly  knocked  him  over.  .  .  .  And  guess  who 
it  was,"  said  Harry,  with  a  horrible  kind  of 
hysterical  laugh,  "guess  who  it  was  .  .  . 
it  was  Burnett — Burnett  of  all  people. 
.  .  .  He  had  been  sent  up  to  find  out 
what  had  happened.  Well,  he  asked  what 
the  hell  I  was  doing,  and  said  I  was  to  go  on 
at  once.  ...  I  said  I  was  going  to  wait  a  bit, 
there  was  too  much  of  a  barrage.  .  .  .  Then 
he  said,  very  offensively,  he  couldn't  help  that 
.  .  .  my  orders  were  to  go  on  at  once.  .  .  . 
That  annoyed  me,  and  I  said  I'd  see  him 
damned  first,  and  told  him  if  it  was  so  urgent 
he  could  take  the  party  up  himself  if  he  liked. 

[235] 


The  Secret  Battle 

.  .  .  But  he  didn't,  naturally  ...  no  reason 
why  he  should.  .  .  .  Then  he  rang  up  Phil- 
pott  and  told  him  that  he  had  seen  the  officer 
in  charge  and  some  of  the  party  running  down 
the  road — demoralized.  So  he  had,  of  course, 
— he  saw  me  running  for  the  dug-out  .  .  . 
though  the  joke  of  it  is — the  joke  of  it  is  ... 
he  was  sheltering  there  himself  I"  And  at  the 
enormity  of  that  joke  Harry  went  off  into 
that  hideous  laughter  again.  "He  said  I  re- 
fused to  obey  orders,  and  asked  for  instruc- 
tions. Philpott  said  it  was  too  late  now,  the 
stuff  had  been  wanted  by  midnight.  ...  He 
told  Burnett  to  put  me  under  arrest  .  .  .  and 
come  back. 

"That's  what  happened,"  he  went  on,  "and 
I  don't  care — only  I  wish  it  had  been  anybody 
but  Burnett — though  I  suppose  he  was  quite 
right;  but  it  makes  no  odds  ...  I  had  got 
the  wind-up,  and  I  had  failed  with  the  party, 
and  I  don't  deny  it  ...  even  if  I  wasn't  really 
running  when  he  saw  me.  .  .  .  One  thing  I 
can  say — if  I  did  have  the  wind-up  I've  never 
had  cold  feet— till  that  night.  ...  I'm  glad 
I  came  out  this  time  if  I  did  fail  at  the  pinch. 
[236] 


The  Secret  Battle 

.  .  .  Burnett  wouldn't  have.  ...  I  knew  I 
was  done  when  I  came  .  .  .  and  I  know  I'm 
done  now. 

"But  I  wish  you'd  just  explain  it  all  to  Peggy 
and  the  people  who  don't  know." 

And  that  is  what  I  am  trying  to  do. 


[237] 


XII 

THE  Court-Martial  was  held  in  an  old 
farm  lying  just  outside  the  village. 
There  was  a  large  courtyard  where 
the  chickens  clucked  all  day,  and  children 
and  cattle  roamed  unchecked  in  the  spacious 
midden.  The  court-room  was  unusually  suit- 
able to  its  purpose,  being  panelled  all  round  in 
some  dark  wood  with  great  black  beams  under 
a  white-washed  ceiling,  high  and  vaulted,  and 
an  open  hearth  where  the  dry  wood  crackled 
heartlessly  all  day.  Usually  these  trials  are 
conducted  in  the  best  bedroom  of  some  estami- 
net,  and  the  Court  sits  defensively  with  a  vast 
white  bed  at  their  backs.  But  this  room  was 
strangely  dignified  and  legal:  only  at  first 
Madame  persisted  in  marching  through  it  with 
saucepans  to  the  kitchen — all  these  curious 
English  functions  were  the  same  to  her,  a 
Christmas  dinner,  or  a  mess-meeting,  or  the 
trial  of  a  soldier  for  his  life. 
The  Court  impressed  me  rather  favourably 

[238] 


The  Secret  Battle 

— a  Major-General,  and  four  others.  The 
Major-.General,  who  was  President  of  the 
Court,  was  a  square,  fatherly-looking  person, 
with  a  good  moustache,  and  rather  hard  blue 
eyes.  He  had  many  rows  of  ribbons,  so  many 
that  as  I  looked  at  them  from  a  dark  corner  at 
the  back,  they  seemed  like  some  regiment  of 
coloured  beetles,  paraded  in  close  column  of 
companies.  All  these  men  were  very  excel- 
lently groomed :  "groomed"  is  the  right  word, 
for  indeed  they  suggested  a  number  of  well- 
fed  horses;  all  their  skins  were  bright,  and 
shiny,  and  well  kept,  and  the  leather  of  their 
Sam  Brownes,  and  their  field  boots,  and  jing- 
ling spurs,  and  all  their  harness  were  beautiful 
and  glistening  in  the  firelight.  I  once  went 
over  the  royal  stables  at  Madrid.  And  when 
all  these  glossy  -creatures  jingled  heavily  up 
to  their  table  I  was  reminded  of  that.  They 
sat  down  and  pawed  the  floor  restively  with 
their  well-polished,  hoofs,  cursing  in  their 
hearts  because  they  had  been  brought  so  far 
"to  do  some  damned  court-martial."  But  all 
their  faces  said,  "Thank  God,  at  least  I  have 
had  my  oats  today." 

[239] 


The  Secret  Battle 

And  there  was  an  atmosphere  of  greyness 
about  them.  The  hair  of  some  of  them  was 
splashed  with  grey;  the  faces  of  most  of  them 
were  weathered  and  grey;  and  one  felt  that 
the  opinions  of  all  of  them  were  grey,  but  not 
weathered. 

For  they  were  just  men,  according  to  their 
views.  They  would  do  the  thing  conscien- 
tiously, and  I  could  not  have  hoped  for  a  better 
Court.  But  as  judges  they  held  the  fatal  mil- 
itary heresy,  that  the  forms  and  procedure  of 
Military  Law  are  the  best  conceivable  machin- 
ery for  the  discovery  of  truth.  It  was  not 
their  fault;  they  had  lived  with  it  from  their 
youth.  And  since  it  is  really  a  form  of  con- 
ceit, the  heresy  had  this  extension,  that  they 
themselves,  and  men  like  them,  blunt,  honest, 
straightforward  men,  were  the  best  conceiv- 
able ministers  for  the  discovery  of  truth — and 
they  needed  no  assistance.  Any  of  them  would 
have  told  you,  "Damn  it,  sir,  there's  nothing 
fairer  to  the  prisoner  than  a  Field  General 
Court-Martial";  and  if  you  read  the  books  or 
witness  the  trial  of  a  soldier  for  some  simple 
"crime,"  you  will  agree.  But  given  a  com- 
[240] 


The  Secret  Battle 

plex  case,  where  testimony  is  at  all  doubtful, 
where  there  are  cross-currents  and  hidden  ani- 
mosities, the  "blunt,  honest"  men  are  lost. 

To  begin  with,  being  in  their  own  view  all- 
seeing  and  all-just,  they  consider  the  Prison- 
er's Friend  to  be  superfluous:  and  if  he  at- 
tempts any  genuine  advocacy  they  cannot 
stomach  the  sight  of  him.  "Prisoner's  Friend 
be  damned!"  they  will  tell  you,  "the  Prose- 
cutor does  all  that!  and  anything  he  doesn't 
find  out  the  Court  will."  Now  the  Prosecutor 
is  indeed  charged  with  the  duty  of  "bringing 
out  anything  in  the  favour  of  the  Accused": 
that  is  to  say,  if  Private  Smith  after  looting 
his  neighbour  becomes  afterwards  remorseful 
and  returns  his  loot  to  its  owner,  the  Prose- 
cutor will  ask  questions  to  establish  the  fact. 
In  a  case  like  Harry's  it  means  practically 
nothing.  The  Prosecutor  will  not  cross-ex- 
amine a  shifty  or  suspicious  witness — dive 
into  his  motives — get  at  the  secret  history  of 
the  business,  first,  because  it  is  not  his  job,  and 
secondly,  because  being  as  a  rule  only  the  ad- 
jutant of  his  battalion,  he  does  not  know  how. 

The  Court  will  not  do  this,  because  they  do 


The  Secret  Battle 

not  know  anything  about  the  secret  history, 
and  they  are  incapable  of  imagining  any ;  be- 
cause they  believe  implicitly  that  any  witness, 
officer  or  man  (except  perhaps  the  accused), 
is  a  blunt,  honest,  straightforward  man  like 
themselves,  and  incapable  of  deception  or  con- 
cealment. 

This  is  the  job  of  the  Prisoner's  Friend. 
Now  "The  Book"  lays  down  very  fairly  that 
if  he  be  an  officer,  or  otherwise  qualified,  Pris- 
oner's Friend  shall  have  all  the  rights  of  de- 
fending counsel  in  a  civil  court.  In  practice, 
the  "blunt  men"  often  make  nothing  of  this 
safeguard.  Many  courts  I  have  been  before 
had  never  heard  of  the  provision;  many,  hav- 
ing heard  of  it,  refused  flatly  to  recognize  it, 
or  insisted  that  all  questions  should  be  put 
through  them.  When  they  do  recognize  the 
right,  they  are  immediately  prejudiced  against 
the  prisoner  if  that  right  is  exercised.  Any 
attempt  to  discredit  or  genuinely  cross-exam- 
ine a  witness  is  regarded  as  a  rather  sinister 
piece  of  "cleverness";  and  if  the  Prisoner's 
Friend  ventures  to  sum  up  the  evidence  in  the 
accused's  favour  at  the  end — it  is  too  often 

[242] 


The  Secret  Battle 

"that  damned  lawyer-stuff."  Usually  it  is 
safer  for  a  prisoner  to  abandon  his  rights  alto- 
gether in  that  respect. 

But  that  should  not  be  in  a  case  like  Harry's. 
The  question  of  counsel  was  vital  in  his  case. 
I  make  no  definite  charges  against  Philpott 
and  Burnett.  All  I  say  is  that  it  was  unfor- 
tunate that  the  two  men  most  instrumental  in 
bringing  Harry  to  trial  should  have  been  the 
only  two  men  with  whom  he  had  ever  had  any 
bitterness  during  his  whole  military  career. 
It  was  specially  unfortunate  that  Burnett 
should  be  the  first  and  principal  accuser, 
when  you  remembered  that  almost  the  last 
time  Harry  had  seen  Burnett  he  had  shown 
courage  where  Burnett  had  shown  cowardice, 
and  thus  humiliated  him.  This  case  could 
have  been  passed  over;  hundreds  such  have 
been  passed  over,  and  on  their  merits,  from 
any  human  standpoint,  rightly.  Why  was 
this  one  dragged  up  and  sent  stinking  to  the 
mandarins?  Well,  one  possible  answer  was 
— "Look  at  the  history  of  these  three  men." 
And  in  the  light  of  that  history  I  say  that 
Philpott  and  Burnett  should  have  been  ruth- 

[243] 


The  Secret  Battle 

lessly  cross-examined  by  a  really  able  man, 
till  the  very  heart  of  them  both  lay  bare. 
Whether  the  issue  would  have  been  different 
I  don't  know,  but  at  least  there  would  have 
been  some  justice  on  both  sides.  And  it  may 
even  be  that  a  trained  lawyer  could  not  only 
have  got  at  the  heart  of  the  matter,  but  also 
prevailed  upon  the  Court  not  to  be  prejudiced 
against  him  by  his  getting  at  it.  For  that 
brings  you  back  to  the  real  trouble.  I  could 
have  done  it  myself  and  gladly;  if  any  one 
knew  anything  about  these  men,  I  did.  But 
if  I,  acting  for  Harry,  had  really  cross-exam- 
ined Burnett,  asked  him  suddenly  what  he  was 
doing  in  that  dug-out,  and  when  he  hesitated, 
suggested  that  he  too  was  sheltering,  and  quite 
rightly,  because  the  fire  was  so  heavy;  or  if  I 
brought  out  the  history  of  that  night  at  Gallip- 
oli,  and  suggested  that  the  animosity  between 
the  two  men  might  both  explain  Harry's  con- 
duct in  the  dug-out,  and  account  for  Burnett 
having  made  the  charge  in  the  first  place, 
thus  throwing  some  doubt  on  the  value  of  his 
evidence — all  that  would  have  been  "clever- 
ness." And  if  I  had  suggested  that  Philpott 

[244] 


The  Secret  Battle 

himself,  my  C.  O.,  might  have  some  slight 
spite  against  the  accused,  or  asked  him  why 
he  had  applied  for  a  Court-Martial  on  this 
case  after  hushing  up  so  many  worse  ones,  I 
think  the  Court  would  have  become  apoplec- 
tic with  horror  at  the  sacrilege. 

Then  again  it  had  been  fixed  that  Travers 
should  be  Prisoner's  Friend;  he  knew  more 
about  the  Papers  and  the  Summary  of  Evi- 
dence, and  so  on,  than  any  one  (though  as  the 
papers  had  only  been  sent  down  the  morning 
before,  he  did  not  know  a  great  deal) .  So  we 
left  it  at  that.  Travers  was  a  young  law  stu- 
dent in  private  life,  but  constitutionally  timid 
of  authority,  and  he  made  no  great  show,  in 
spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  Deputy  Judge  Ad- 
vocate, a  person  supposed  to  assist  every- 
body. But,  as  I  have  said,  perhaps  it  was  as 
well. 

For  what  they  thought  of  as  the  "hard  facts 
of  the  case'7  were  all  that  mattered  to  the 
Court,  and  as  related  by  Philpott  and  Burnett 
and  Peters,  they  were  pretty  damning.  That 
bit  about  the  "running"  was  fatal.  It  made 
a  great  impression.  Both  the  Prosecutor  and 

[245] 


The  Secret  Battle 

two  of  the  Court  asked  Burnett,  "Are  you  sure 
he  was  running?"  If  he  had  only  been  walk- 
ing away  from  the  enemy  it  would  have  made 
so  much  difference! 

Travers  did  ask  Burnett  why  was  he  in  the 
dug-out  entrance;  and  it  showed  you  what  a 
mockery  any  kind  of  cross-examination  would 
h&ve  been.  In  the  absence  of  short-hand 
writers  every  question  and  almost  every  an- 
swer was  written  down,  word  for  word,  by 
the  Deputy  Judge  Advocate.  After  a  ques- 
tion was  put  there  was  a  lengthy  pause  while 
the  officer  wrote;  then  there  was  some  un- 
certainty and  some  questions  about  the  exact 
form  of  the  question.  Had  Travers  said, 
"Why  were  you  in  the  dug-out?"  or  "Why  did 
you  go  to  the  dug-out?"  Finally,  all  being 
satisfactorily  settled  and  written  down,  the 
witness  was  allowed  to  answer.  But  by  then 
the  shiftiest  witness  had  had  time  to  invent  a 
dozen  suitable  answers.  No  liar  could  pos- 
sibly be  caught  out — no  deceiver  ever  be  de- 
tected— under  this  system.  That  was  "being 
fair  to  the  witness." 

Burnett  answered,  of  course,  that  he  had 

[246] 


The  Secret  Battle 

gone  there  to  inquire  if  the  working-party  had 
been  seen. 

To  do  Burnett  justice,  he  did  not  seem  at 
all  happy  at  having  to  tell  his  tale  again.  If 
his  original  report  had  really  been  made  un- 
der a  sudden  impulse  of  spite  and  revenge 
(and,  however  that  may  be,  he  could  certainly 
have  made  a  very  different  report),  I  think 
perhaps  he  had  not  realized  how  far  the  mat- 
ter would  go — had  not  imagined  that  it  would 
come  to  a  Court-Martial,  and  now  regretted 
it.  But  it  was  too  late.  He  could  not  eat  his 
words.  And  that  was  the  devil  of  it.  Bur- 
nett might  have  made  a  different  report;  Phil- 
pott  could  have  "arranged  things"  with  the 
Brigade — could  have  had  Harry  sent  to  the 
Base  on  the  ground  of  his  record  and  medical 
condition,  and  not  have  applied  for  a  Court- 
Martial.  But  once  those  "hard  facts"  came 
before  the  Court,  to  be  examined  under  that 
procedure,  simply  as  "hard  facts" — an  officer 
ordered  up  with  a  party  and  important  stores; 
some  of  the  party  scattered;  officer  seen  run- 
ning, running,  mind  you — in  the  wrong  direc- 
tion; officer  "shaken"  on  the  evidence  of  his 

[247] 


The  Secret  Battle 

men,  and  refusing  to  obey  an  order — it  was  too 
late  to  wonder  whether  the  case  should  ever 
have  come  there.  That  was  Philpott's  busi- 
ness. He  did  not  seem  disturbed.  He  even 
mentioned — casually — that  "there  had  been  a 
similar  incident  with  this  officer  once  before, 
when  his  conduct  with  a  working-party  by  no 
means  satisfied  me."  Quite  apart  from  the 
monstrous  misrepresentation  of  the  thing,  the 
statement  was  wholly  inadmissible  at  that 
stage,  and  the  President  stopped  him.  But 
that  also  was  too  late.  It  had  sunk  in.  ... 

And  so  the  evidence  went  slowly  on,  un- 
shaken— not  that  it  was  all  unshakable ;  no  one 
tried  to  shake  it. 

After  Philpott  came  Peters,  the  N.  C.  O.,  a 
good  fellow. 

He  told  the  Court  what  Harry  had  said 
about  "going  back  to  wait  a  bit,"  instead  of 
going  straight  on  when  the  party  collected 
again. 

They  asked  him,  "Was  there  any  reason 
why  the  party  should  not  have  gone  on 
then?" 

"Well,  sir,"  he  said,  "the  shelling  was  bad, 
[248] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  we  should  have  had  some  casualties,  but 
I  daresay  we  should  have  got  through.  I've 
seen  as  bad  before." 

Then  there  was  one  of  the  men  who  had 
been  with  Harry,  a  good  fellow,  who  hated 
being  there.  He  told  the  story  of  the  move- 
ments of  the  party  with  the  usual  broken  ir- 
relevances, but  by  his  too  obvious  wish  to  help 
Harry  did  him  no  good.  When  asked  "in 
what  condition"  the  officer  was,  he  said,  "Well, 
sir,  he  seemed  to  have  lost  his  nerve,  like  .  .  . 
we  all  of  us  had  as  far  as  that  goes,  the  shelling 
was  that  'eavy."  But  that  was  no  defence  for 
Harry. 

Harry  could  either  "make  a  statement"  not 
on  oath,  or  give  evidence  on  oath  and  be 
cross-examined.  He  chose  the  latter — related 
simply  the  movements  of  the  party  and  him- 
self, and  did  not  deny  any  of  the  facts  of 
which  evidence  had  already  been  given. 

"When  you  had  collected  the  party  under 
the  bank  by  this  corner  you  speak  of,"  said  the 
President,  "why  did  you  not  then  proceed  with 
the  party?" 

"I  thought  the  shelling  was  too  heavy,  sir, 

[249] 


The  Secret  Battle 

just  then;  I  thought  it  would  be  better  to  go 
back  and  wait  a  bit  where  there  was  more 
cover  till  the  shelling  got  less.  .  .  ." 

"But  Sergeant  Peters  says  the  party  would 
probably  have  got  through?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"In  view  of  the  orders  you  had  received, 
wouldn't  it  have  been  better  to  go  straight 
on?" 

"I  don't  know,  sir — perhaps  it  would." 

"Then  why  didn't  you  do  that?" 

"At  the  time,  sir,  I  thought  it  best  to  go 
back  and  wait." 

"And  that  was  what  you  were  doing  when 
you  were  seen — er,  running  to  the  dug-out?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

Well,  the  Court  did  not  believe  it,  and  I 
cannot  blame  them.  For  I  knew  that  Harry 
was  not  being  perfectly  ingenuous.  I  knew 
that  he  could  not  have  gone  on.  ... 

Yet  it  was  a  reasonable  story.  And  if  the 
Court  had  been  able  to  imagine  themselves  in 
Harry's  condition  of  mind  and  body,  crouch- 
ing in  the  wet  dark  under  that  bank,  faint  with 
weariness  and  fear,  shaken  with  those  blind- 

[250] 


The  Secret  Battle 

ing,  tearing  concussions,  not  knowing  what 
they  should  do,  or  what  they  could  do,  per- 
haps they  would  have  said  in  their  hearts,  "I 
will  believe  that  story."  But  they  could  not 
imagine  it.  For  they  were  naturally  stout- 
hearted men,  and  they  had  not  seen  too  much 
war.  They  were  not  young  enough. 

And,  indeed,  it  was  not  their  business  to 
imagine  that.  .  .  . 

Another  of  the  Court  asked:  "Is  it  true  to 
say,  as  Private  Mallins  said,  that  you  had — 
ah — lost  your  nerve?" 

"Well,  sir,  I  had  the  wind-up  pretty  badly; 
one  usually  does  at  that  corner — and  I've  had 
too  much  of  it." 

"I  see." 

I  wondered  if  he  did  see — if  he  had  ever 
had  "too  much  of  it." 

Harry  said  nothing  about  Burnett;  nothing 
about  Philpott;  probably  it  would  have  done 
no  good.  And  as  he  told  me  afterwards, 
"The  real  charge  was  that  I'd  lost  my  nerve 
— and  so  I  had.  And  I  don't  want  to  wangle 
out  of  it  like  that." 

That  was  the  end  of  it.     They  were  kind 


The  Secret  Battle 

enough,  those  grey  men;  they  did  not  like 
the  job,  and  they  wanted  only  to  do  their  duty. 
But  they  conceived  that  their  duty  was  "laid 
down  in  The  Book,"  to  look  at  the  "hard 
facts,"  and  no  further.  And  the  "hard  facts" 
were  very  hard.  .  .  . 

The  Court  was  closed  while  they  considered 
their  verdict;  it  was  closed  for  forty  minutes, 
and  when  it  reopened  they  asked  for  evidence 
of  character.  And  that  meant  that  the  ver- 
dict was  "Guilty."  On  the  only  facts  they 
had  succeeded  in  discovering  it  could  hardly 
have  been  anything  else. 

The  Adjutant  put  in  formal  evidence  of 
Harry's  service,  age,  record,  and  so  on;  and 
I  was  allowed  to  give  evidence  of  character. 

I  told  them  simply  the  sort  of  fighting  rec- 
ord he  had,  about  Gallipoli,  and  the  scouting, 
and  the  job  he  had  refused  in  England. 

I  am  glad  to  believe  that  I  did  him  a  little 
good ;  for  that  evening  it  got  about  somehow 
that  he  was  recommended  to  mercy. 

And  perhaps  they  remembered  that  he  was 
twenty-three. 

[252] 


XIII 

THAT  evening  I  sat  in  C  Company  mess 
for  an  hour  and  talked  with  them 
about  the  trial.  They  were  very  sad 
and  upset  at  this  thing  happening  in  the  regi- 
ment, but  they  were  reasonable  and  generous, 
not  like  those  D  Company  pups,  Wallace  and 
the  other.  For  they  were  older  men,  and  had 
nearly  all  been  out  a  long  time.  Only  one  of 
them  annoyed  me,  a  fellow  in  the  thirties, 
making  a  good  income  in  the  City,  who  had 
only  joined  up  just  before  he  had  to  under  the 
Derby  scheme,  and  had  been  out  a  month. 
This  fellow  was  very  strong  on  "the  honour 
of  the  regiment" ;  and  seemed  to  think  it  de- 
sirable for  that  "honour"  that  Harry  should 
be  shot.  Though  how  the  honour  of  the  regi- 
ment would  be  thereby  advanced,  or  what 
right  he  had  to  speak  for  it,  I  could  not  dis- 
cover. 

But  the  others  were  sensible,  balanced  men, 

[253] 


The  Secret  Battle 

and  as  perplexed  and  troubled  as  I.  I  had 
been  thinking  over  a  thing  that  Harry  had 
said  in  his  talk  with  me — "If  I  did  have  the 
wind-up  I've  never  had  cold  feet."  It  is  a 
pity  one  cannot  avoid  these  horrible  terms, 
but  one  cannot.  I  take  it  that  "wind-up" — 
whatever  the  origin  of  that  extraordinary  ex- 
pression may  be — signifies  simply  "fear." 
"Cold  feet"  also  signifies  fear,  but,  as  I  under- 
stand it,  has  an  added  implication  in  it  of  base 
yielding  to  that  fear.  I  told  them  about  this 
distinction  of  Harry's,  and  asked  them  what 
they  thought. 

"That's  it,"  said  Smith,  "that's  just  the 
damned  shame  of  the  whole  thing.  There  are 
lots  of  men  who  are  simply  terrified  the  whole 
time  they're  out,  but  just  go  on  sticking  it  by 
sheer  guts — will-power,  or  whatever  you  like 
— that's  having  the  wind-up,  and  you  can't 
prevent  it.  It  just  depends  how  you're  made. 
I  suppose  there  really  are  some  people  who 
don't  feel  fear  at  all — that  fellow  Drake,  for 
example— though  I'm  not  sure  that  there  are 
many.  Anyhow,  if  there  are  any  they  don't 
deserve  much  credit  though  they  do  get  the 

[254] 


The  Secret  Battle 

V.  C.'s.  Then  there  are  the  people  who  feel 
fear  like  the  rest  of  us  and  don't  make  any  ef- 
fort to  resist  it,  don't  join  up  or  come  out,  and 
when  they  have  to,  go  back  after  three  months 
with  a  blighty  one,  and  get  a  job,  and  stay 
there " 

"And  when  they  are  here  wangle  out  of  all 
the  dirty  jobs,"  put  in  Foster. 

"Well,  they're  the  people  with  'cold  feet' 
if  you  like,"  Smith  went  on,  "and  as  you  say, 
Penrose  has  never  been  like  that.  Fellows 
like  him  keep  on  coming  out  time  after  time, 
getting  worse  wind-up  every  time,  but  simply 
kicking  themselves  out  until  they  come  out 
once  too  often,  and  stop  one,  or  break  up  sud- 
denly like  Penrose,  and " 

"And  the  question  is — ought  any  man  like 
that  to  be  shot?"  asked  Foster. 

"Ought  any  one  who  volunteers  to  fight  for 
his country  be  shot?"  said  another. 

"Damn  it,  yes,"  said  Constable;  he  was  a 
square,  hard-looking  old  boy,  a  promoted  N. 
C.  O.,  and  a  very  useful  officer.  "You  must 
have  some  sort  of  standard — or  where  would 
the  army  be?" 

[255] 


The  Secret  Battle 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Foster,  "look  at  the 
Australians — they  don't  have  a  death-penalty, 
and  I  reckon  they're  as  good  as  us." 

"Yes,  my  son,  perhaps  that's  the  reason" — 
this  was  old  Constable  again — "the  average 
Australian  is  naturally  a  sight  stouter-hearted 
than  the  average  Englishman — they  don't 
need  it." 

"Then  why  the  hell  do  they  punish  Eng- 
lishmen worse  than  Australians,  if  they  can't 
even  be  expected  to  do  so  well?"  retorted  Fos- 
ter; but  this  piece  of  dialectics  was  lost  on 
Constable. 

"Anyhow,  I  don't  see  that  it  need  be  such 
an  absolute  standard,"  Smith  began  again, 
thoughtfully;  he  was  a  thoughtful  young  fel- 
low. "They  don't  expect  everybody  to  have 
equally  strong  arms  or  equally  good  brains; 
and  if  a  chap's  legs  or  arms  aren't  strong 
enough  for  him  to  go  on  living  in  the  trenches 
they  take  him  out  of  it  (if  he's  lucky).  But 
every  man's  expected  to  have  equally  strong 
nerves  in  all  circumstances,  and  to  go  on  hav- 
ing them  till  he  goes  under;  and  when  he  goes 
under  they  don't  consider  how  far  his  nerves, 

[256] 


The  Secret  Battle 

or  guts,  or  whatever  you  call  it,  were  as  good 
as  other  people's.  Even  if  he  had  nerves  like 
a  chicken  to  begin  with  he's  expected  to  be- 
have as  a  man  with  nerves  like  a  lion  or  a 
Drake  would  do.  .  .  ." 

"A  man  with  nerves  like  a  chicken  is  a 
damned  fool  to  go  into  the  infantry  at  all," 
put  in  Williams — "the  honour  of  the  regi- 
ment" person. 

"Yes,  but  he  may  have  had  a  will-power  like 
a  lion,  and  simply  made  himself  do  it." 

"You'd  be  all  right,  Smith,"  somebody  said, 
"if  you  didn't  use  such  long  words ;  what  the 
hell  do  you  mean  by  an  absolute  standard?" 

"Sorry,  George,  I  forgot  you  were  so  ig- 
norant. What  I  mean  is  this.  Take  a  case 
like  Penrose's:  All  they  ask  is,  was  he  seen 
running  the  wrong  way,  or  not  going  the  right 
way?  If  the  answer  is  Yes — the  punishment 
is  death,  et  cetera,  et  cetera.  To  begin  with, 
as  I  said,  they  don't  consider  whether  he  was 
capable  physically  or  mentally — I  don't  know 
which  it  is — of  doing  the  right  thing.  And 
then  there  are  lots  of  other  things  which  we 
know  make  one  man  more  'windy'  than  an- 

[257] 


The  Secret  Battle 

other,  or  windier  today  than  he  was  yesterday 
— things  like  being  a  married  man,  or  having 
boils,  or  a  bad  cold,  or  being  just  physically 
weak,  so  that  you  get  so  exhausted  you  haven't 
got  any  strength  left  to  resist  your  fears  (Pve 
had  that  feeling  myself) — none  of  those  things 
are  considered  at  all  at  a  court-martial — and 
I  think  they  ought  to  be." 

"No,"  said  Foster,  "they  ought  to  be  con- 
sidered before  they  decide  to  have  a  court- 
martial  at  all.  A  case  like  Penrose's  never 
ought  to  have  got  so  far." 

"You're  right — I  don't  know  why  the  devil 
it  did." 

"After  all,"  said  Williams,  "you've  got  to 
consider  the  name  of  the  regiment.  What 
would  happen " 

But  I  could  not  stand  any  more  of  that.  "I 
think  Smith's  on  the  right  line,"  I  said, 
"though  I  don't  know  if  it  would  ever  be 
workable.  There  are,  of  course,  lots  of  fel- 
lows who  feel  things  far  more  than  most  of  us, 
sensitive,  imaginative  fellows,  like  poor  Pen- 
rose — and  it  must  be  hell  for  them.  Of  course 
there  are  some  men  like  that  with  enormously 

[258] 


The  Secret  Battle 

strong  wills  who  manage  to  stick  it  out  as  well 
as  anybody,  and  do  awfully  well — I  should 
think  young  Aston,  for  instance — and  those  I 
call  the  really  brave  men.  Anyhow,  if  a  man 
like  that  really  does  stick  it  as  long  as  he  can, 
I  think  something  ought  to  be  done  for  him, 
though  I'm  damned  if  I  know  what.  He 
oughtn't  .  .  ." 

"He  oughtn't  to  be  allowed  to  go  on  too 
long — that's  what  it  comes  to,7'  said  Smith. 

"Well,  what  do  you  want,"  Foster  asked, 
"a  kind  of  periodical  Wind-up  Examina- 
tion?" 

"That's  the  kind  of  thing,  I  suppose.  It  is 
a  medical  question,  really.  Only  the  doctors 
don't  seem  to  recognize — or  else  they  aren't 
allowed  to — any  stage  between  absolute  shell- 
shock,  with  your  legs  flying  in  all  directions, 
and  just  ordinary  skrim-shanking." 

"But  damn  it,  man,"  Constable  exploded, 
"look  at  the  skrim-shanking  you'll  get  if  you 
have  that  sort  of  thing.  You'd  have  all  the 
mother's  darlings  in  the  kingdom  saying  they'd 
had  enough  when  they  got  to  the  Base." 

"Perhaps — no,  I  think  that's  silly.  I  don't 

[259] 


The  Secret  Battle 

know  what  it  is  that  gives  you  bad  wind-up 
after  a  long  time  out  here,  nerves  or  imagina- 
tion or  emotion  or  what,  but  it  seems  to  me 
the  doctors  ought  to  be  able  to  test  when  a 
man's  really  had  enough;  just  as  they  tell 
whether  a  man's  knee  or  a  man's  heart  are 
really  bad  or  not.  You'd  have  to  take  his 
record  into  account,  of  course.  .  .  ." 

"And  you'd  have  to  make  it  a  compulsory 
test,"  said  Smith,  "because  nowadays  no  one's 
going  to  go  into  a  Board  and  say,  'Look  here, 
doctor,  I've  been  out  so  long  and  I  can't  stand 
any  more.'  They'd  send  you  out  in  the  next 
draft!" 

"Compulsory  both  ways,"  added  Foster: 
"when  they'd  decided  he'd  done  enough,  and 
wasn't  safe  any  longer,  he  oughtn't  to  be  al- 
lowed to  do  any  more — because  he's  danger- 
ous to  himself  and  everybody  else."  * 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,"  said  Williams,  "that's 
what  usually  does  happen,  doesn't  it?  When 

1  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that,  long  after  the  supposed  date 
of  this  conversation,  a  system  of  sending  "war-weary"  soldiers 
home  for  six  months  at  a  time  was  instituted,  though  I  doubt 
if  Foster  would  have  been  satisfied  with  that. 

[260] 


The  Secret  Battle 

a  chap  gets  down  and  out  like  that  after  a  de- 
cent spell  of  it,  he  usually  gets  a  job  at  home- 
instructor  at  the  Depot,  or  something." 

"Yes,  and  then  you  get  a  fellow  with  the 
devil  of  a  conscience  like  Penrose — and  you 
have  a  nasty  mess  like  this." 

"And  what  about  the  men?"  asked  Con- 
stable. "Are  you  going  to  have  the  same 
thing  for  them?" 

"Certainly — only,  thank  God,  there  are  not 
so  many  of  them  who  need  it.  All  that  chat 
you  read  about  the  'wonderful  fatalism'  of 
the  British  soldier  is  so  much  bunkum.  It 
simply  means  that  most  of  them  are  not  cursed 
with  an  imagination,  and  so  don't  worry  about 
what's  coming." 

"That's  true;  you  don't  see  many  fatalists 
in  the  middle  of  a  big  strafe." 

"Of  course  there  are  lots  of  them  who  are 
made  like  Penrose,  and  with  a  record  like  his, 
something " 

"And  it's  damned  lucky  for  the  British 
Army  there  are  not  more  of  them,"  put  in 
Constable. 


The  Secret  Battle 

"Certainly,  but  it's  damned  unlucky  for 
them  to  be  in  the  British  Army — in  the  in- 
fantry, anyhow." 

"And  what  docs  that  matter?" 

"Oh,  well,  you  can  take  that  line  if  you  like 
—but  it's  a  bit  Prussian,  isn't  it?" 

"Prussia's  winning  this  dirty  war,  anyhow, 
at  present." 

So  the  talk  rambled  on,  and  we  got  no  fur- 
ther, only  most  of  us  were  in  troubled  agree- 
ment that  something — perhaps  many  things 
— were  wrong  about  the  System,  if  this  young 
volunteer,  after  long  fighting  and  suffering, 
was  indeed  to  be  shot  like  a  traitor  in  the  cold 
dawn. 

Nine  times  out  of  ten,  as  Williams  had  said, 
we  knew  that  it  would  not  have  happened, 
simply  because  nine  men  out  of  ten  surrender 
in  time.  But  ought  the  tenth  case  to  be  even 
remotely  possible?  That  was  our  doubt. 

What  exactly  was  wrong  we  could  not  pre- 
tend to  say.  It  was  not  our  business.  But 
if  this  was  the  best  the  old  men  could  do,  we 
felt  that  we  could  help  them  a  little.  I  give 
you  this  scrap  of  conversation  only  to  show  the 
[262] 


The  Secret  Battle 

kind  of  feeling  there  was  in  the  regiment — 
because  that  is  the  surest  test  of  the  Tightness 
of  these  things. 

They  were  still  at  it  when  I  left.  And  as  I 
went  out  wearily  into  the  cold  drizzle  I  heard 
Foster  summing  up  his  views  with:  "Well, 
the  whole  thing's  damned  awful.  They've 
recommended  him  to  mercy,  haven't  they? 
and  I  hope  to  God  he  gets  it." 

II 

But  he  got  no  mercy.  The  sentence  was 
confirmed  by  the  higher  authorities. 

I  cannot  pretend  to  know  what  happened, 
but  from  some  experience  of  the  military 
hierarchy  I  can  imagine.  I  can  see  those 
papers,  wrapped  up  in  the  blue  form,  with  all 
the  right  information  beautifully  inscribed  in 
the  right  spaces,  very  neat  and  precise,  care- 
fully sealed  in  the  long  envelopes,  and  sent 
wandering  up  through  the  rarefied  atmosphere 
of  the  Higher  Formations.  Very  early  they 
halt,  at  the  Brigadier,  or  perhaps  the  Divi- 
sional General,  some  one  who  thinks  of  him- 
self as  a  man  of  "blood  and  iron."  He  looks 

[263] 


The  Secret  Battle 

upon  the  papers.  He  reads  the  evidence — 
very  carefully.  At  the  end  he  sees  "Recom- 
mended to  Mercy." — "All  very  well,  but  we 
must  make  an  example  sometimes.  Where's 
that  confidential  memo,  we  had  the  other  day? 
That's  it,  yes.  'Officer  who  fails  in  his  duty 
must  be  treated  with  the  same  severity  as 
would  be  awarded  to  private  in  the  same  cir- 
cumstances.' Quite  right  too.  Shan't  ap- 
prove recommendation  to  mercy.  Just  write 
on  it,  'See  no  reason  why  sentence  should  not 
be  carried  out,'  and  I'll  sign  it." — Or,  more 
simply  perhaps :  "Mercy !  mercy  be  damned ! 
must  be  treated  with  the  same  severity  as 
cold  feet  in  my  Command."  And  so  the  blue 
form  goes  climbing  on,  burdened  now  with 
that  fatal  endorsement,  labouring  over  ridge 
after  ridge,  and  on  each  successive  height  the 
atmosphere  becomes  more  rarefied  (though 
the  population  is  more  numerous).  And  at 
long  last  it  comes  to  some  Olympian  peak — I 
know  not  where — beyond  which  it  may  not 
go,  where  the  air  is  so  chill  and  the  popula- 
tion so  dense,  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
breathe.  Yet  here,  I  make  no  doubt,  they 

[264] 


The  Secret  Battle 

look  at  the  Blue  Form  very  carefully  and 
gravely,  as  becomes  the  High  Gods.  But  in 
the  end  they  shake  their  heads,  a  little  sadly, 

maybe,  and  say,  "Ah,  General  B does  not 

approve  recommendation  to  mercy.  He's  the 
man  on  the  spot,  he  ought  to  know.  Must 
support  him.  Sentence  confirmed." 

Then  the  Blue  Form  climbs  sadly  down  to 
the  depths  again,  to  the  low  regions  where  men 
feel  fear.  .  .  . 

•          •••••• 

The  thing  was  done  seven  mornings  later,  in 
a  little  orchard  behind  the  Casquettes'  farm. 

The  Padre  told  me  he  stood  up  to  them  very 
bravely  and  quietly.  Only  he  whispered  to 
him,  "For  God's  sake  make  them  be  quick." 
That  is  the  worst  torment  of  the  soldier  from 
beginning  to  end — the  waiting.  .  .  . 

Ill 

After  three  months  I  had  some  leave  and 
visited  Mrs.  Harry.  I  had  to.  But  I  shall 
not  distress  you  with  an  account  of  that  inter- 
view. I  will  not  even  pretend  that  she  was 
"brave."  How  could  she  be?  Only,  when 

[265] 


The  Secret  Battle 

I  had  explained  things  to  her,  as  Harry  had 
asked,  she  said:  "Somehow,  that  does  make 
it  easier  for  me — and  I  only  wish — I  wish  you 
could  tell  everybody — what  you  have  told 


me." 


And  again  I  say,  that  is  all  I  have  tried  to 
do.  This  book  is  not  an  attack  on  any  person, 
on  the  death  penalty,  or  on  anything  else, 
though  if  it  makes  people  think  about  these 
things,  so  much  the  better.  I  think  I  believe 
in  the  death  penalty — I  don't  know.  But  I 
did  not  believe  in  Harry  being  shot. 

That  is  the  gist  of  it;  that  my  friend  Harry 
was  shot  for  cowardice — and  he  was  one  of  the 
bravest  men  I  ever  knew. 


THE  END 


[266] 


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